THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A 
MUSTANG. 


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THROUGH  RUSSIA 


ON  A 


MUSTANG 


BY 

•      THOMAS  STEVENS 

AUTHOR   OF  "AROUND  THE  WORLD  OX   A  IHCYCLE,"   "SCOUTING  FOR 
STANLEY  IN  EAST  AFRICA,"  ETC. 


With  Illustrations  from  Photographs  by  the  Author 


NEW  YORK 
CASSELE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

104  &   106  FOURTH  AVENUE 


Copyright,  1891,  by 
CASSELL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved. 


THE  MERSHON  COMPANY  PRESS, 
RAHWAY,  N.  J. 


The  story  of  a  ride  from  Moscow  to  the  Black  Sea,  made 
by  the  author  last  summer  (1890)  for  the  New  York  World, 
to  report  on  the  condition,  manners,  customs,  etc.,  of  the 
people  of  European  Russia.  The  ride  (about  1100  English 
miles  through  the  heart  of  Russia)  was  made  on  a  "Wild 
America"  mustang,  bought  from  the  Carver-Whitney  show 
(like  Buffalo  Bill's),  that  happened  to  be  exhibiting  in 
Moscow  at  the  time. 

T.  STEVENS. 


PREFACE. 


IN  the  following  pages  the  author  has  endeavored 
to  give  an  unbiased  picture  of  the  Russians  and  their 
country:  as  seen  by  him  from  the  saddle,  on  a  horse- 
back ride  of  more  than  one  thousand  miles  through 
the  heart  of  the  country,  from  Moscow  to  Sevastopol; 
thence  up  the  Don  and  the  Volga  to  Nijni  Novgorod. 

When  in  Moscow,  preparing  for  the  horseback 
journey,  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  enlist  the  enthu- 
siasm of  Sascha  Kritsch,  a  young  Russian  who  had 
just  completed  his  studies,  and  was  eager  to  distin- 
guish himself  by  a  noteworthy  achievement  in  the 
saddle  before  joining  the  cavalry.  He  could  speak 
English,  and  both  as  an  interpreter  and  a  companion 
I  found  him  of  much  value.  He  accompanied  me  as 
far  as  Ekaterinoslav,  about  two  thirds  of  the  distance 
to  the  Black  Sea,  when  the  heat  and  fatigue  of  the 
southern  steppes,  together  with  the  suspicions  and 
vexatious  interference  of  the  police,  caused  him  to  dis- 
pose of  his  horse  and  return  to  Moscow  by  rail. 

I  may  say  that,  in  so  far  as  I  permitted  myself  the 
indulgence  of  preconceived  ideas,  my  wish  was  to 
exploit  the  better,  rather  than  the  more  objectionable, 
features  of  the  government,  and  the  economic  and 
political  conditions  of  the  country.    Before  the  ride 

vii 


viii 


PREFACE. 


was  half  finished,  however,  I  found  myself  compelled 
to  admit  that  matters  were  very  bad,  indeed. 

The  harshest  feature  of  the  many  harsh  sides  of  life 
in  Russia,  to  an  American,  is  the  utter  absence  of  con- 
stitutional rights. 

Individuals  have  no  rights  in  Russia.  They  exist  in 
peace  and  breathe  the  air  outside  a  prison  cell  solely 
on  the  sufferance  of  the  police,  whose  authority  over 
them  is  practically  that  of  deputy  despots  in  their 
capacity  as  representatives  of  the  Czar. 

When  I  first  reached  St.  Petersburg,  I  wrote  home  of 
the  agreeable  impression  that  was  made  on  me  by  see- 
ing the  Czar  driving  freely  about  the  streets,  with 
scarcely  any  escort.  Before  leaving  Russia,  however, 
I  discovered  that,  in  order  to  make  this  sort  of  thing 
possible,  the  Czar's  Chief  of  Police  summarily  expels 
from  the  capital  no  less  than  fifteen  thousand  persons 
every  year,  or  an  average  of  over  forty  a  day.  Tourists 
and  casual  visitors  from  America  and  Europe  see  the 
Czar  driving  about  in  this  manner,  but  they  know 
nothing  of  the  other  side  of  the  picture — of  the  steady 
streams  of  "  suspects  "  and  others  driven  from  the  city, 
three  fourths  of  whom  are  probably  innocent  of  evil 
intent,  and  so  they  come  away  with  rosy  and  erroneous 
impressions,  thinking  they  have  seen  Russia. 

Those  who  have  seen  merely  St.  Petersburg  and 
Moscow,  have  seen  little  or  nothing  of  real  Russia,  nor 
even  if  they  have  made  the  grand  tour  across  the 
country  by  rail,  and  up  or  down  the  Volga.  These 
tourists  have  glided  over  the  surface  of  Russia,  their 
path  made  smooth  and  agreeable  by  the  imported 
polish  of  the  West ;  but  they  have  not  been  in  it. 


PREFACE. 


ix 


Russia  has  within  its  vast  area  resources  that  should 
make  its  future  as  promising  as  the  future  of  the 
United  States.  The  development  of  the  country 
from  this  time  forward  offers  a  field  of  profound 
speculation  for  prophetic  statesmen  and  political  seers. 
That  a  nation  of  120,000,000  people,  chiefly  Caucasians, 
are  to  be  kept  in  bondage  forever  is  out  of  the  question. 
Hopeless  as  the  outlook  seems  at  present  for  the 
masses  of  the  Russian  people,  all  history  teaches  that 
the  day  of  their  emancipation  will,  sooner  or  later, 
come.  The  best  solution  of  the  situation  that  could 
be  hoped  for,  would,  perhaps,  be  a  progressive  and 
liberal  Czar,  who  would  have  sufficient  courage  and 
energy  to  give  the  country  a  constitutional  govern- 
ment, a  free  press,  and  religious  liberty.  If  this  be  too 
long  delayed,  and  the  autocracy  should  survive  the 
fall  of  European  militarism,  which  is  inevitable,  civili- 
zation will  develop  an  "age  of  humanitarianism " 
when  the  American,  the  Englishman,  the  Frenchman, 
and  the  Teuton,  will  recognize  the  Russian  as  a 
brother,  and  see  to  it  that  he  is  relieved  of  his  shackles. 


The  Author. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 

PAGE 

I. 

St.  Petersburg,  . 

I 

II. 

TCHUDOVO*  AND  THE  PRISTAV, 

23 

III. 

Planning  the  Ride  

• 

37 

IV. 

The  Start  from  Moscow,  . 

56 

V. 

On  the  Czar's  Highway, 

•  7i 

VI. 

With  Count  TolstoI,  . 

• 

92 

VII. 

Among  the  Moujiks, 

.  116 

VIII. 

Scenes  on  the  Road, 

.  126 

IX. 

Into  Malo  Russia,  . 

X. 

Susricious  Peasants, 

153 

XI. 

Nuns  and  Convents, 

.  170 

XII. 

Stopped  by  the  Police, 

182 

XIII. 

A  Searching  Cross-Examination, 

•  199 

XIV. 

My  Interpreter  Returns,  . 

216 

XV. 

On  the  Crimean  Steppes, 

•  237 

XVI. 

Up  the  Don  and  Volga, 

251 

XVII. 

At  Nijni  Novgorod,  . 

270 

XVIII. 

281 

XIX. 

Orthodox  Church  and  Priests, 

297 

XX. 

Russian  Women,  .... 

313 

XXI. 

A  National  Characteristic,  . 

324 

xi 


LIST.  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


FACING  PAGE 

THOMAS  STEVENS,            ------  Title 

ROADSIDE  VODKA-SHOP,      -  2\ 

POST   STATION   ON   STEPPE,     -----  50 

RESTING   AT   WAYSIDE   INN,         -----  70 

HARVEST  TIME,  -  84 

FEMALE  PILGRIMS,     -                           -  104 

GIRL   HOSTLER,        -          -          -          -          -          -          -  I  20 

STEPPE  CATTLE-WELL,       ------  140 

COSSACK   CEMETERY,  ,  160 

STEPPE   FLOUR   MILL,   l8o 

CRIMEAN   SHEPHERDS,      -.---«-  200 

TARTARS  OF   THE  CRIMEA,          -----  220 

ORTHODOX   VILLAGE  PRIEST,  -----  240 

WATER-MELON  VENDERS,    ------  260 

TARTAR   FURRIERS  AT   NIJNI   NOVGOROD,         -          -  280 

MOUJIKS  AT   THE   NIJNI   FAIR,    -                    ....  30O 

xiii 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


OR  the  second  time  I  w  as  bound  for  the  Land  of 


1  the  Czar.  But  this  time  I  was  to  enter  it  by  a 
different  door,  in  a  different  manner,  and  for  a  differ- 
ent purpose.  My  previous  entrance  had  been  inci- 
dental ;  this  was  to  be  special.  In  1886,  when  on  my 
bicycle  ride  across  Asia,  Russian  suspicion  had  barred 
my  road  through  Turkestan,  and  the  Afghans  had  ar- 
rested me  and  turned  me  back  into  Persia,  after  I  had 
pierced  into  their  forbidden  country  to  within  three 
hundred  miles  of  Quctta.  So,  in  June  of  that  year, 
when,  in  order  to  overcome  this  hundred-league  bar- 
rier it  became  necessary  to  reach  the  free  roads  of 
India  by  a  roundabout  journey  of  six  thousand  miles, 
I  saw  something  of  Russia  in  the  Caucasus  and  on  the 
shores  of  the  Caspian  Sea. 

My  impressions  were  not  favorable  to  the  Russian 
rule.  At  the  wharves  of  Baku,  I,  for  the  first  time  in 
my  life,  had  seen  smart,  uniformed  policemen  strike 
people  smashing  blows  in  the  face  with  clenched  fist, 
and  kick  them  most  brutally  in  the  stomach,  for  what 
in  England  or  America  would  have  called  forth  a  mere 
gruff  order  to  "  move  on,"  or  at  most  a  threatening 
push.    From  page  257,  vol.  2,  "  Around  the  World  on 


CHAPTER  I. 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


1 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


a  Bicycle,"  I  quote,  writing  of  my  impressions  of 
Baku: 

"  Everywhere,  everywhere,  hovers  the  shadow  of  the 
police.  One  seems  to  breathe  dark  suspicion  and  mis- 
trust in  the  very  air.  The  people  in  the  civil  walks  of 
life  all  look  like  whipped  curs.  They  wear  the  expres- 
sion of  people  brooding  over  some  deep  sorrow.  The 
crape  of  dead  liberty  seems  to  hang  on  every  door-knob. 
Nobody  seems  capable  of  smiling;  one  would  think 
the  shadow  of  some  great  calamity  is  hanging  gloomily 
over  the  city.  Nihilism  and  discontent  run  riot  in  the 
cities  of  the  Caucasus  ;  government  spies  and  secret 
police  are  everywhere,  and  the  people  on  the  streets 
betray  their  knowledge  of  the  fact  by  talking  little,  and 
always  in  guarded  tones." 

Such  was  the  impression  made  on  the  author  by  his 
first  visit  to  Russian  soil.  Was  this  impression  in  any 
degree  the  result  of  disgust  at  having  been  humbugged 
by  the  Russian  Minister,  at  Teheran,  about  permission 
to  ride  through  Merve,  Samarkand,  and  Tashkend  ? 
That  gentleman  had  promised  me,  with  Oriental  polite- 
ness of  tongue,  that  "  all  obstacles  should  be  removed 
from  my  road  through  Turkestan."  With  the  inno- 
cence of  one  whose  experience  of  Russian  officialdom 
was  yet  of  the  future,  I  had  believed  that  the  tongue 
of  a  Russian  diplomat,  like  the  tongue  of  any  other 
person,  was  given  him  to  express  his  thoughts  and  in- 
tentions, and  not  to  conceal  them ;  and  so,  on  the 
strength  of  the  promise,  I  rode  three  hundred  miles 
across  the  Persian  deserts,  there  to  find  that  orders 
had  been  telegraphed  to  stop  me  at  the  frontier. 

Commenting  on  this,  a  reviewer  of  my  book  in  the 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


3 


New  York  Times,  himself  a  distinguished  traveler, 
observed  :  "  Possibly  this  reverse  may  have  been  still 
fuddling  the  clear  spirit  of  our  author  when  he  reached 

Baku  Mr.  Stevens  was  probably  of  the  same 

way  of  thinking  (just  then)  as  that  energetic  traveler 
who  wished  that  the  last  Russian  would  murder  the 
last  Turk,  and  be  hanged  for  doing  it." 

Nearly  four  years,  mainly  devoted  to  travel  and  ad- 
venturous undertakings,  had  mellowed  this  gloomy 
reminiscence  of  the  Russians,  and  had  broadened  my 
experience  of  mankind  in  general.  Perhaps,  after  all, 
there  might  have  been  something  in  the  book  reviewer's 
suggestions,  that  I  was  not  then  in  a  sufficiently  amia- 
ble frame  of  mind  to  do  Muscovy  justice. 

However  this  may  have  been,  such  was  not  the  case 
as  the  author  stepped  aboard  an  Atlantic  liner,  May 
I,  1890,  bound  for  Russia,  on  a  special  mission  for  the 
New  York  World. 

For  many  years  the  people  of  America  had  taken  a 
friendly  interest  in  Russia.  We  had  been,  in  trying 
times,  the  recipient  of  courtesies  from  its  government, 
and  our  sympathies  had  gone  out  to  it  as -a  great 
nation  of  people  groaning  under  the  oppressive  rule 
of  an  autocracy,  which  is  the  extreme  antithesis  of  our 
own  institutions.  Our  position  in  regard  to  its  gov- 
ernment had  been  peculiar.  From  our  own  point  of 
view  the  Czar's  government  cannot  appear  otherwise 
than  as  a  monstrous  enemy  to  the  very  principles  that 
are  the  life-blood  of  all  that  we  hold  dear  and  precious 
in  the  name  of  liberty,  fraternity,  and  justice  ;  yet  we 
have  accepted  courtesies  at  its  hands  as  from  the  hands 
of  a  bosom  friend.    Now  and  then  our  sentiments  in 


4 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


regard  to  it  have  been  rudely  shocked  by  revelations 
of  a  more  or  less  revolting  nature  as  to  its  methods  of 
dealing  with  the  people  in  its  power.  Our  interest  in 
it  became  painfully  intensified  as  the  Siberian  revela- 
tions of  Mr.  Kennan  were  unfolded  in  the  Century 
Magazine. 

So  revolting  was  this  picture  of  barbarity  and  admin- 
istrative corruption  that  many  of  our  people,  whose 
kindly  remembrance  of  Russian  courtesies  influenced 
their  prejudices  and  biased  their  better  feelings  in  its 
favor,  could  not  but  receive  them  with  a  spirit  of  won- 
dering skepticism. 

The  Russians  were  keenly  sensitive  to  the  criticisms 
of  the  people  of  America  concerning  them,  more  so 
than  to  the  opinions  of  any  other  nation.  A  rebuke 
from  us  seemed  to  them  like  a  rebuke  from  a  friend. 
They  are  thicker-skinned  in  regard  to  England.  Abuse 
and  bias  from  the  press  and  people  of  England,  many 
Russians  have  come  to  regard  as  a  foregone  conclu- 
sion. They  think  the  great  dailies  of  England  will 
publish  eagerly  anything  and  everything  of  a  disrepu- 
table and  abusive  nature  about  Russia,  and  refuse, 
like  the  Jews  in  regard  to  Nazareth,  to  believe  that 
anything  good  can  come  out  of  it.  This  is  the  inev- 
itable consequence  of  the  political  tension  between 
the  two  empires.  But  they  expected  from  us,  at  least, 
an  impartial  judgment  equally  as  to  their  good  quali- 
ties and  their  imperfections.  It  was  because  they  re- 
garded America  as  a  country  with  which  they  have 
ever  been  on  the  friendliest  terms,  that  made  the  Rus- 
sians feel  apprehensive  lest  the  Kennan  articles  should 
cause  them  to  be  wholly  misunderstood,  and  blind  us 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


5 


to  the  better  side  of  their  nature.  One  cannot,  of 
course,  say  anything  in  this  connection  of  the  119,- 
900,000,  out  of  Russia's  120,000,000,  who  never  heard 
of  the  Century  nor  Mr.  Kennan,  and  who  have  as  vague 
ideas  of  the  world  beyond  the  limited  horizon  of  their 
village  communes  (mirs)  as  the  Persian  ryot  in  Khor- 
assan,  who  once  asked  me  if  America  was  in  London. 

There  was  little  to  be  learned  of  the  true  Russia  in 
St.  Petersburg.  In  Russia  the  investigator  very  soon 
discovers  that  he  is  sojourning  in  what  may  fairly  be 
termed  a  dual  country.  There  is  the  Russia  of  St. 
Petersburg,  Moscow,  the  Czar,  the  army,  politics, 
exiles,  Siberia, — of  which  we  read  and  hear  from  day 
to  day, — and  there  is  the  Russia  of  the  peasants,  the 
villages,  the  country-side,  "  domestic  Russia,"  of 
which  we  hear,  and  many  of  us  know,  next  to  nothing. 
By  writing  too  confidently  at  the  beginning,  one  may 
easily  lay  himself  open  to  the  sort  of  criticism  bestowed 
on  the  English  tourist,  who  rides  in  a  parlor-car  from 
New  York  to  San  Francisco  and  then  goes  home  and 
writes  a  book  about  America. 

Though  St.  Petersburg  is  deceptive  as  a  glimpse  of 
Russia,  it  is  an  Imperial  city,  magnificent  as  to 
churches  and  public  edifices,  statuary  and  monuments, 
and  interesting  in  the  life  that  ebbs  and  flows  in  its 
streets.  St.  Petersburg  is  the  rouge  and  enamel  that 
the  sallow,  ill-looking  tragedienne  of  the  mediaeval 
part  that  Russia  is  playing  in  the  drama  of  nations, 
wears,  beautifying  herself,  and  coquetting  successfully 
with  many  who  see  her  and  fancy  she  is  Russia.  St. 
Petersburg  itself  is  charming. 

I  sat  for  an  hour  one  day  in  the  window  of  a  cafe 


6 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


on  the  famous  Nevski  Prospekt.  It  was  four  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  and  a  fine,  sunny  day.  All  the 
Russian  world  and  his  wife  seemed  to  be  driving, 
walking,  hurrying,  idling  past  the  window  on  this 
Broadway  of  the  Russian  capital. 

The  most  numerous  passers-by,  and  to  the  new- 
comer the  most  Russian  and  interesting,  were  the 
drosky-drivers,  the  isvoshchics  and  their  "  fares."  Like 
Washington,  St.  Petersburg  is  a  city  of  magnificent 
distances.  Everybody  rides  ;  fares  are  cheap  ;  and 
there  are  twenty-five  thousand  public  drosky-drivers  in 
the  city  plying  for  hire. 

The  isvoshchic  and  his  costume  are  peculiarly 
Russian.  The  latter  has  not  changed  for  ages,  and 
apart  from  youth  and  age,  whiskers  and  no  whiskers, 
there  is  not  the  splitting  of  a  hair  between  any  of  the 
five-and-twenty  thousand  public  "  kebbies "  in  the 
Czar's  capital.  There  are  isvoshchics  at  fourteen, 
young  in  face  but  old  in  iniquity,  and  isvoshchics  of 
seventy-five,  bearded  like  pards  and  supremely  artful, 
in  bargaining  with  the  foreigner  about  the  priGe  of  a 
drive. 

The  summer  costume  of  the  isvoshchic  is  an  ideal 
garb  for  winter  from  the  point  of  view  of  anybody  but 
a  Russian.  He  is  enveloped  in  an  enormous  overcoat 
of  heavy  dark-blue  cloth  that  descends  to  his  heels  and 
is  gathered  about  his  waist  by  a  gay-colored  band. 
Top  boots,  heavy  and  prodigal  of  leather,  incase  his 
feet  and  legs  ;  and  even  on  this  warm  June  day  a  dis- 
arrangement of  the  big  blue  over-garment  revealed  a 
sheepskin  coat,  of  similar  dimensions,  underneath. 

But  the  crowning  glory  of  the  drosky-driver  is  his 


Sr.  PETERSBURG. 


7 


hat.  Imagine  a  "  stove-pipe  "  hat,  six  inches  tall,  with 
a  very  rakish  brim  and  a  very  expansive  crown,  some- 
thing like  the  hats  of  the  ancient  and  honorable 
beef-eaters  at  the  Tower  of  London,  and  you  see 
any  one  of  the  30,000  coachmen's  hats  of  St.  Peters- 
burg. I  say  30,000,  because  there  are,  beside  the 
public  isvoshchics,  about  five  thousand  private  coachies, 
similarly  dressed. 

The  only  difference  between  the  public  and  private 
isvoshchics  is  that  the  latter  look  about  three  times 
larger  than  the  former.  All  the  private  isvoshchics 
are  men  of  Falstaffian  girth.  Some  are  of  a  truly 
startling  circumference  ;  their  stomachs  bulging  out 
like  barrels,  and  the  breadth  of  their  figure  more  than 
fills  the  seat  of  the  drosky.  The  thinness  of  the  face 
often  contrasts  ludicrously  with  the  vast  proportions 
of  the  body,  for  the  amplitude  of  the  latter  is  not  flesh 
but  padding.  The  impression  that  the  private  coach- 
man desires  to  make  upon  the  world  at  large  is  that  he 
is  the  "well-fed  servant  of  a  generous  man."  To  this 
end,  huge  pads,  like  pillows,  are  fastened  about  the 
body,  and  over  them  is  wrapped  the  all-concealing 
overcoat.  To  complete  the  deception,  the  colored 
waistband  pinches  into  the  padding,  as  if  the  chief 
concern  of  the  owner  of  this  vast  wealth  of  fat  were 
to  reduce  his  girth,  if  such  an  impossible  thing  were 
possible. 

Whilst  every  private  isvoshchic  in  Russia  is  thus  a 
living  lie  in  his  figure,  every  public  one  is  likewise  a 
perambulating  Ananias  in  a  way  that  more  directly 
concerns  the  pockets  of  the  public.  Every  drive  you 
take  in  St.  Petersburg  has  to  be  bargained  for  in  ad- 


8 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


vance.  The  "rates  are  cheaper  than  in  any  other 
European  capital,  being  only  fifty  kopecks,  or  about 
thirty  cents  an  hour.  The  St.  Petersburg  isvoshchic 
is  known  as  the  most  reasonable  of  the  fraternity  in 
Russia ;  he  rarely  demands  more  than  three  times  his 
proper  fare,  and  as  a  general  thing  not  even  twice  as 
much  as  he  is  willing  to  accept. 

He  is  good-natured  and  remarkably  patient  about 
finding  an  address.  He  is  polite — of  the  Orient,  Ori- 
ental. He  rarely  gives  you  a  decided  negative  if  he 
doesn't  wish  to  drive  where  you  desire  to  go,  but  takes 
refuge  in  his  horse,  telling  you  that  it  is  weary,  lazy,  or 
ailing,  and  does  not  want  to  work. 

The  isvoshchic  is  superstitious  and  fearful.  Every 
little  way,  as  he  drives  you  along,  he  passes  an  ikon  or 
shrine,  at  each  of  which  he  removes  his  abbreviated 
cylinder  and  crosses  himself  at  the  forehead,  mouth 
and  breast.  His  fear  is  centered  on  the  Chief  of  Police 
of  St.  Petersburg.  The  isvoshchic  is  rarely  obstreper- 
ous, but  if  he  is,  "I'll  tell  Gresser  "  (or  whoever  hap- 
pens to  be  chief),  brings  matters  to  a  speedy  conclusion 
by  immediately  reducing  him  to  a  humble  and  appre- 
hensive frame  of  mind. 

His  horse  is  small  and  his  vehicle  little  larger  than 
the  old-fashioned  invalid  chairs  one  sometimes  meets, 
with  gouty  old  gentlemen  in  them,  in  the  parks  at 
home. 

A  peculiarity  of  the  "  fares,"  if  a  lady  and  gentle- 
man, is  that  the  latter  usually  has  his  arm  about  his 
companion's  waist.  The  Russian  explanation  is  that 
without  this  precaution  the  lady  might  tumble  out. 
The  levity  and  penetration  of  the  American  mind, 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


9 


however,  refuses  to  accept  this  practical  view  of  the 
matter  in  all  cases.  And  there  certainly  passed  by  the 
cafe  window  many  a  couple  who,  oblivious  of  the  public 
eye,  betrayed  a  decidedly  sentimental  interpretation  of 
the  relations  between  waist  and  arm.  So  prevalent  is 
this  custom  that  an  exception  excites  attention. 

About  five  per  cent,  of  the  ladies,  old  or  young-,  who 
passed  by  the  cafe  window  were  victims  of  the  tooth- 
ache and  had  a  swollen  and  bandaged  jaw.  Tooth- 
ache is  the  commonest  malady  of  the  St.  Petersburg 
fair  sex.  The  St.  Petersburg  girl  of  the  period  stays 
up  late,  lies  abed  till  noon,  takes  no  exercise,  and  lives 
on  sweets  and  pickles.  Her  punishment  is  the  tooth- 
ache, dentist's  bills,  a  toothless  old  age,  and  a  very  bad 
complexion.  Good  teeth  are  rare  with  city  ladies,  and 
a  fresh  complexion  is  seldom  seen  on  the  streets. 

Half  the  men  who  passed  were  in  uniform  and,  warm 
as  it  was,  like  the  isvoshchics,  wore  big  overcoats. 
The  wearing  of  overcoats  in  summer  is  a  Russian 
peculiarity.  One  of  our  popular  impressions  of  the 
Russian  is  that  he  can  stand  more  cold  than  a  polar 
bear.  Such,  however,  is  not  the  case,  at  all  events  with 
the  city  Russian.  An  American  or  European  who 
visits  St.  Petersburg  or  Moscow  in  the  winter  can  stand 
the  cold  better  than  a  resident.  He  can  stand  it  out- 
doors with  thinner  clothes  on,  and  is  altogether  less 
sensitive  to  the  nose-nipping  Russian  frost.  The  Rus- 
sian becomes  a  polar  bear  in  winter,  not  because  he 
can  stand  the  cold,  but  because  he  cannot. 

All  the  people  in  military  uniforms  who  passed  by, 
however,  were  not  soldiers.  You  see  little  shavers  of 
ten  or  twelve  years  old  trudging  along  in  military  over- 


IO 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


coat  and  trappings.  These  are  young  students,  who  are 
required  to  wear  uniforms,  conspicuous  colors  and 
trimmings  for  the  different  schools  for  purposes  of  iden- 
tification.   The  newsboys  also  wear  uniforms. 

A  troop  of  Cossacks  passed  by,  all  big,  fine  fellows, 
belonging  to  one  of  the  crack  regiments,  all  riding 
splendid  black  stallions,  sixteen  hands  high,  spirited  and 
glossy. 

A  private  carriage,  an  English-built  brougham,  with 
a  magnificent  team,  and  gold-laced  lackeys  on  the  box, 
dashed  by.  It  belonged  to  one  of  the  legations,  and 
lolling  in  the  seat,  in  a  studiedly  negligent  attitude, 
was  Madame,  the  Ambassador's  wife,  alone  in  her 
glory,  en  route  to  the  Islands — Vasili  Ostrof — for  her 
regular  evening  drive. 

A  string  of  twelve  droskies  filed  past,  each  one  con- 
taining a  big  Russian  greyhound  and  a  keeper  in  a  red 
shirt.  They  belonged  to  some  sporting  nobleman,  and 
were  bound  for  the  railway  station  to  be  taken  some- 
where out  in  the  country  to  an  estate  for  a  day's 
coursing  for  hares. 

A  man  in  a  suit  of  white  coarse  canvas,  and  with  a 
brand  on  the  back,  tramped  along  between  two  police- 
men with  drawn  swords.  He  was  a  prisoner.  His 
face  was  pale,  showing  that  he  had  been  in  confine- 
ment some  time.  Otherwise,  he  looked  no  different 
from  his  keepers,  with  whom  he  chatted  freely  as  they 
walked  past. 

An  aged  couple  tried  to  halt  a  tram,  which,  like  the 
street  car  of  London,  carried  passengers  both  inside 
and  on  the  roof.  The  conductor  shook  them  a  nega- 
tive.   His  car  was  carrying  the  number  permitted  by 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


1 1 


law,  and  no  such  confusion  and  overcrowding  are 
allowed  as  in  New  York.  Another  one  came  along. 
The  old  couple  tried  it  again  and  were  again  refused. 
Finally  they  hailed  a  passing  isvoshchic,  and,  bargain- 
ing with  him  awhile,  drove  off. 

An  economical  party  of  four  from  the  country  drove 
past,  all  piled  in  one  small  drosky,  two  women  sitting 
in  two  men's  laps.  Workmen  strolled  along,  nine  out 
often  in  top  boots  and  red  shirts.  The  red  shirts  were 
outside  the  trousers.  A  waistcoat  was  worn,  but  no 
coat,  and  the  trousers  were  slouchily  tucked  inside  the 
boots.  Mingled  with  the  throng  were  moujiks  from 
the  country,  visiting  "  Pater-boorg,"  perhaps,  for  the 
first  time  in  their  lives.  They  wore  dirty  sheepskin 
coats,  shockingly  bad  caps,  home-made  foot-gear  of  the 
rudest  pattern  and  material,  and  their  shock  heads 
seemed  to  have  been  trimmed  for  the  visit  to  the  city 
by  placing  a  bowl  on  the  top,  upside  down,  and  clip- 
ping around  it.  They  looked  like  savages — as  incon- 
gruous and  out  of  place  on  the  Nevski  as  Indians 
would  on  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 

Nurse-maids  from  Finland,  or  from  Little  Russia, 
rode  by  in  the  family  carriage  with  their  charges. 
They  wore  a  wonderful  dress  of  gorgeous  colors  and 
gold  embroidery,  and  a  sort  of  beaded  brass,  silver  or 
gold  crown  on  the  head. 

Young  lady  students  passed  in  little  troops  or  alone, 
carrying  portfolios  bearing  the  word  "  Musique." 
Music  was  the  fad  of  the  day  in  St.  Petersburg.  All 
the  young  ladies  were  raving  over  "  musique."  Next 
season  the  craze  would  be — who  can  say?  I  was  told 
that  one  of  the  latest  fads  with  them  was  the  study  of 


12 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


midwifery.  Everything  in  the  student  life,  especially 
the  girl  student  life,  is  faddy  and  eccentric.  It  is  the 
spasmodic  attempt  of  the  intellectual  Russian  youth 
to  find  some  employment,  some  scope  for  their  energy 
and  ambition,  in  a  field  where  there  is  next  to  no 
intellectual  employment  at  all. 

A  small  crowd  was  gathering  on  the  street  corner,  as 
I  left  my  window  in  the  cafe.  The  Czar  was  coming 
in  from  Peterhoff  and  would  drive  this  way,  I  did  not 
wait,  for  I  had  seen  him  and  the  Empress  before.  The 
Emperor  and  Empress  were  almost  as  much  in  evi- 
dence as  the  President  in  Washington.  When  the 
Czar  and  the  Italian  heir-apparent,  who  was  visiting  St. 
Petersburg,  drove  down  the  Nevski,  it  was  down  a  lane 
through  the  assembled  and  applauding  populace,  on 
which  scarcely  a  soldier  or  a  policeman  was  to  be  seen. 
The  people  were  under  less  restraint  than  a  New  York 
crowd  is  at  any  popular  gathering. 

All  this  impressed  me,  a  new  arrival,  with  a  sense  of 
agreeable  surprise. 

Yes  ;  St.  Petersburg,  consummate  actress  and  gay 
deceiver  that  she  is,  was  bewitching,  disporting  herself, 
arrayed  in  the  focused  glories  of  an  empire,  to  the  ad- 
miration of  an  audience  of  pleasure-seeking  tourists 
from  everywhere.  The  pageantry  of  the  Czar's 
capital  was  ever  on  the  move  across  the  stage.  To- 
day the  christening  and  launching  of  an  ironclad  ;  to- 
morrow a  priestly  procession  along  the  Nevski,  a 
glittering  cavalcade  of  monks  in  golden  vestments,  in 
honor  of  the  Emperor's  name-day ;  the  next  day,  a 
military  review. 

One  day  I  resolved  to  leave  this  pomp  and  Imperial 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


13 


greatness,  and  experience  the  contrast  of  a  sudden 
change  from  the  Elysian  glories  of  Peterhoff  to  the 
huts  of  a  typical  village  seventy  miles  away.  Peter- 
hoff is  an  Imperial  summer  residence  on  the  gulf  of 
Finland  ;  grounds  peopled  with  gilded  statuary,  amid 
a  magnificent  system  of  fountains. 

Mr.  Steveni  of  the  London  Daily  Chronicle,  a  resi- 
dent correspondent,  went  with  me  toTchudovo. 

Tchudovo  is  about  one  hundred  versts  (seventy 
miles)  from  St.  Petersburg,  in  the  direction  of  Moscow, 
a  village  in  the  district  government  of  Novgorod.  A 
Russian  village  is  in  appearance  the  counterpart  of 
many  small  towns  in  the  Western  States.  The  first 
impression  of  the  writer,  who  knows  the  West  very 
well,  was  that  he  had  stumbled  into  one  of  those 
slowly  decaying  backwood  villages  in  Missouri  or 
Illinois  that  have  fallen  out  of  joint  and  behind  the 
times  because  the  railway  didn't  come  through  their 
section  of  the  country.  Tchudovo  is  situated  in  a 
country  as  level  and  dreary  as  the  dreariest  part  of  any 
of  the  prairie  States.  The  land  belonging  to  the 
village  was  a  big  clearing  in  a  level  forest  country  that 
presented  to  the  eye  no  single  point  of  interest  be- 
yond the  people  and  their  mode  of  life.  The  village 
was  like  all  Russian  villages,  except  that  many  of  the 
houses  were  two-storied.  It  consisted  of  two  rows  of 
houses,  between  which  ran  Peter  the  Great's  broad 
military  road  to  Novgorod.  A  few  of  the  houses  were 
of  brick,  but  most  were  of  wood.  Here  as  everywhere, 
though  the  uniformity  of  architecture  was  striking, 
evidences  of  wealth  and  poverty  came  within  the  orbit 
of  a  glance.    Some  of  the  houses  were  fairly  toppling 


1 4  THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUS  TA  JVC 


about  their  occupant's  heads,  and  in  no  country  of  the 
world  (and  I  had  been  in  twenty-four),  had  I  seen  peo- 
ple so  wretchedly  lodged  as  part  of  the  population  of 
Tchudovo.  Many,  however,  were  good,  comfortable 
board  or  log  houses,  comparable  to  the  houses  of 
eighty-acre  farmers  in  the  West.  Half  the  houses 
might,  perhaps,  come  under  this  description  ;  one 
fourth  of  them  would  be  considered  by  us  as  wholly 
unfit  for  human  habitation,  and  the  remainder  were 
superior  dwellings,  from  the  American  farmer's  stand- 
point, including  one  which  might  fairly  be  termed  a 
mansion. 

There  was  a  bakery,  in  front  of  which,  on  a  rude 
bench,  a  row  of  huge  rye  loaves  were  exposed  for  sale. 
There  were  three  or  four  general  stores,  the  counter- 
parts of  the  American  corner  grocery,  and  as  many 
vodka  and  mead  and  kwass  shops.  There  was  the  inev- 
itable village  smithy  and  a  school ;  towering  over  all 
was  a  large  white  church,  surmounted  by  four  blue 
domes  and  a  blue  spire.  Both  church  and  mansion 
were  of  Graeco-Corinthian  architecture,  a  fact  that  led 
one  to  suspect  that  the  founder  of  the  church  and  the 
former  occupant  of  the  mansion,  before  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  serfs  in  1861,  was  the  nobleman  who  owned 
the  land  and  peasantry  of  the  district. 

We  made  our  way  to  the  blacksmith  shop,  here,  as  in 
the  West,  often  the  gossiping  place  of  the  village,  and 
entered  into  conversation  with  the  blacksmith,  a  man 
of  fifty,  his  son  and  assistant,  a  young  man  of  twenty- 
five,  and  a  ragged  moujik,  all  of  whom  took  off  their  hats 
as  we  entered  and  sat  down.  As  many  of  my  readers 
already  know,  the  Russian  villages  are  communes  of 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


"J 


peasants  who  own  their  land  in  common.  Except  for 
the  disturbing  influences  of  insolvent  peasants  who 
have  recklessly  got  over  their  heads  in  debt,  or  from 
other  causes,  have  become  landless,  the  Russian  village 
commune  or  mir  is  a  collection  of  families  and  kins- 
folk who  own  the  right  of  tillage  each  to  a  certain 
portion  of  their  common  land.  This  is  the  ideal  mir. 
But  with  the  mir  as  with  everything  else,  in  Russia  as 
elsewhere,  the  real  and  the  ideal  seldom  agree. 

The  mir  of  Tchudovo,  the  blacksmith  said,  contained 
2000  people,  of  which  something  over  500  were  "  souls," 
that  is  to  say,  sharers  in  the  land.  The  rest  were 
the  children,  small  shopkeepers  and  vodka-sellers,  the 
''pope"  or  priest,  the  grain  merchant  who  lived  in  the 
mansion  of  the  former  nobleman,  and  landless  "  bat- 
raks,"  who  worked  for  wages  at  anything  they  could 
find  to  do.  The  blacksmith's  son  was  the  most  intel- 
ligent of  the  three.  We  asked  him  about  the  mir  and 
the  various  things  that  make  up  the  sum  and  sub- 
stance of  the  Russian  peasant's  life.  The  people  of 
Tchudovo,  he  said,  had  been  wiser  than  many  of  their 
neighbors.  The  mirs  had  a  right  to  borrow  money 
from  the  banks  or  from  private  capitalists,  giving  the 
land  as  security.  Many  had  done  this,  and  by  pledging 
themselves  to  ruinous  terms  were  in  sorry  straits, 
having  hard  work  to  keep  their  heads  above  water  and 
pay  their  taxes. 

"We  have  had  better  sense,  though,"  said  he,  smil- 
ing with  the  peculiar  grin  of  a  simple  rustic  soul  who 
is  not  to  be  easily  taken  in,  "  and  have  never  borrowed 
money,  and  so  our  mir  is  very  well  off." 

"  If  your  mir  is  well  off,  why,  then,  are  there  so  many 


i  6  THRO  UGH  R  US  SI  A  OJV  A  MUS  TA  NG. 


batraks  (men  without  land  who  work  for  wages) 
here  ?  " 

"  Men  and  mirs  are  very  much  alike,"  he  returned ; 
"some  are  wise  and  some  foolish.  Most  men  become 
batraks  because  they  have  foolishly  borrowed  money, 
and,  being  unable  to  repay,  their  horses  and  cows  have 
been  sold,  and  they  have  lost  their  power  to  cultivate 
any  of  the  mir's  land.  Every  member  of  the  mir  has 
the  right  to  work  a  share  of  the  land  for  the  support  of 
his  family  and  the  payment  of  his  taxes,  a  large  or 
small  portion  according  to  the  number  of  persons 
capable  of  field-work  and  tax-payment  in  the  family  ; 
but  with  the  loss  of  his  horses  and  the  means  of  work- 
ing land  he  is  no  longer  a  moujik,  but  a  batrak,  a  man 
who  would  starve  but  for  charity  or  work  given  him  by 
others. " 

"  What  is  the  hardest  thing  about  the  way  you  are 
governed  ?  " 

"  The  taxes,"  sang  out  our  hearers  in  one  voice,  and 
the  countenances  of  all  lit  up,  and  tongues  wagged  vol- 
ubly in  eager  rivalry  to  tell  their  tale  of  woe. 

"  So  the  government  taxes  you  pretty  heavily,  does 
it?" 

"  No,  no;  the  government  gets  but  very  little  of  it. 
If  the  government  knew  all  that  happens  to  the  moujik, 
it  would  pity  him.  The  government  taxes  the  mir  and 
the  mir  taxes  the  individual.  The  elders  collect  the 
taxes  and  go  off  to  Novgorod  and  drink  vodka  and  eat 
caviar  with  the  Novgorod  officials,  then  come  back 
and  demand  more  taxes.  It  would  be  much  better  for 
us  all  if  the  Czar  could  sweep  away  everybody  that 
stands  between  the   Imperial   Government  and  the 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


people,  and  have  no  elders,  no  officers  of  any  kind. 
The  more  officials  who  have  the  handling  of  our  taxes 
and  the  management  of  our  affairs,  the  worse  for  us." 

"  But  the  mir  has  the  election  of  its  own  officers.  If 
the  present  starosta  (mayor)  and  the  elders  are  dis- 
honest and  grasping,  why  don't  you  elect  honest  men, 
like  the  blacksmith  there,  in  their  places?  " 

"  The  blacksmith  doesn't  know  how  to  read  and 
write,"  they  laughed;  "  how  could  he  be  starosta? 
We  have  tried  to  remedy  matters,  but  the  educated 
people  are  too  sharp  for  us  ;  they  always  manage  to 
keep  in  office  whomever  they  choose,  and  the  wisest 
moujik  keeps  his  mouth  shut  closest.  The  elders 
assess  each  one  of  us  the  amount  of  taxes  he  has  to 
pay,  the  amount  of  work  to  be  done  on  the  roads  with- 
out pay,  and  have  the  regulation  of  everything  in  the 
mir.  If  I  am  their  friend,  they  take  care  that  my 
share  of  the  taxes  shall  be  light  and  my  work  on  the 
roads  easy,  and  when  the  Czar  demands  soldiers  they 
will  pass  by  my  son  and  pick  out  the  son  of  a  moujik 
who  has  made  himself  objectionable  to  them  by 
grumbling  at  them  and  voting  against  them  at  the 
elections.  There  are  moujiks  in  the  mir  who  pay  next 
to  no  taxes  at  all,  and  moujiks  who  have  to  work  away 
from  home  like  batraks,  besides  tilling  their  land,  to  get 
money  enough  to  pay  their  taxes.  It  is  the  same  in 
nearly  every  mir.  If  every  man  had  a  good  heart  the 
mirs  would  be  happy  and  prosperous,  the  moujiks  well 
fed  and  clad,  and  our  taxes  would  be  light  and  easily 
paid.  But  every  mir  is  a  house  of  intrigue,  in  which 
the  moujik  is,  in  one  way  or  another,  cheated  out  of 
most  of  his  earnings." 


i8 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


"  Then  you  have  nothing  to  complain  of  about  the 
St.  Petersburg  government  ?  " 

The  group  in  the  smithy  had  increased  by  this  time 
to  a  half-dozen.  The  eagerness  and  intelligence  which 
they  all  displayed  in  discussing  their  own  affairs,  in 
striking  contrast  to  their  ignorance  of  the  outer  world, 
was  something  remarkable.  It  was  easy  to  imagine 
that  if  these  peasants  were  only  decently  educated 
they  would  be  a  different  people.  They  are  born 
village  politicians.  Their  faces  were  animated  and 
bright,  and  from  their  eyes  shone  a  light  which  was 
the  lamp  of  an  uncultured  intelligence,  which  enabled 
them  to  understand,  if  not  to  remedy,  their  grievances. 
They  were  extremely  good-natured  about  it  all,  how- 
ever. A  reform  that  they  were  looking  forward  to, 
and  expecting  great  things  of,  was  a  distinct  reaction- 
ary move  in  the  direction  of  local  autocracy.  The  peri- 
odical peasant  courts  were  to  be  done  away  with,  they 
said,  and  in  their  stead  were  to  be  individual  officers,  a 
species  of  cadi,  appointed  from  St.  Petersburg.  The 
fact  that  they  preferred  to  have  their  cases  tried  by  a 
single  judge,  rather  than  in  an  organized  court,  was  a 
significant  straw  showing  the  bent  of  the  uncultured 
Russian  mind. 

All  the  lesser  cases  among  the  Russian  peasantry, 
both  civil  and  criminal,  are  decided  by  the  mir  on  the 
basis  of  custom  and  common  sense,  though  it  is  very 
certain  that  the  justice  meted  out  by  the  elders  and 
starostas  of  the  mirs  is,  like  the  collection  of  the  taxes, 
too  often  a  warped  and  unjust  thing,  manipulated  by 
the  intriguers  and  wire-pullers  of  the  commune.  It 
was  plainly  evident  that  the  group  of  poor  ragamuffin 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


19 


moujiks  in  the  blacksmith  shop  of  Tchudovo  would  pre- 
fer to  place  all  their  affairs  in  the  hands  of  one  reason- 
ably honest  stranger  than  to  submit  them  to  even  their 
own  rural  assembly.  Yet  theirs  was  a  comparatively 
prosperous  community.  They  stated  with  pride  that 
their  mir  was  free  from  debt,  and  with  still  greater 
pride  they  pointed  to  their  church  and  told  us  that  it 
was  richer  than  even  the  churches  in  Novgorod. 

"No,"  they  replied,  to  our  last  question.  "St. 
Petersburg  doesn't  bother  us  much.  The  Czar  takes 
only  five  young  men  each  year  for  soldiers.  They  have 
to  be  twenty-one  years  of  age,  and  they  are  chosen  by 
the  starosta  and  elders  of  the  mir." 

They  then  went  on,  in  reply  to  other  questions,  to 
talk  about  the  Czar.  The  Czar  Alexander  III,  they 
said,  was  a  good  man,  who  introduced  many  reforms 
(the  peasants  use  a  number  of  English  words,  such  as 
reform,  bank,  per  cent.),  and  if  some  of  them  didn't 
work  very  well  for  the  moujik  it  was  not  his  fault,  but 
the  fault  of  the  local  officials,  or  circumstances  over 
which  he  had  no  control.  They  spoke  affectionately 
of  the  late  Emperor  Alexander  II,  who,  they  said, 
freed  "  the  Christians."  The  Russian  peasants  never 
called  themselves  serfs,  but  Christians,  and  so  consider 
themselves.  The  term  as  applied  to  them  originated 
with  the  Mongols,  of  Ghcngis  Khan.  When  the  Mon- 
gols conquered  and  enslaved  them,  they  called  them 
Christians  as  a  term  of  contempt.  The  moujiks  accep- 
ted the  appellation  as  a  compliment  and  an  honor,  and 
have  stuck  to  it  ever  since.  To  the  moujik  everything 
Russian  is  sacred.  Russia  is  Holy  Russia,  the  Czar  is 
God's  elected,  the  Russian  army  is  the  Orthodox  army, 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


the  Church  the  Orthodox  and  only  true  church,  and  the 
Russians  are  Christians,  as  distinct  from  foreigners,  who 
are  heretics. 

We  asked  them  about  America.  They  had  heard  of 
it,  but  knew  nothing  about  where  it  was.  They  asked 
if  it  was  a  good  country  to  live  in. 

"  In  America,"  I  replied,  "  every  man  is  his  own 
Czar,  and  nobody  has  to  be  a  soldier  unless  he  wants 
to." 

"That  may  be  good  for  America,"  they  said,  shaking 
their  shock  heads,  "  but  not  for  us.  For  us,  our  Czar 
is  much  better." 

"  Here  you  have  to  work  for  five  rubles  a  month," 
I  pursued  ;  "  in  America  a  workman  earns  as  much  in 
one  day.  Why  don't  you  go  to  America,  like  the 
Germans?  " 

"  It  is  true  that  we  work  hard  and  get  small  pay, 
but  it  is  better  to  remain  in  Russia  and  be  poor  than 
to  live  elsewhere  and  grow  rich.  It  is  all  very  well  for 
the  Germans,  but  we  like  Mother  Russia  best  of  all." 

How  devoted  they  seemed,  these  rag-bedecked, 
soft-spoken,  polite  peasants — how  loyal  to  Mother 
Russia  and  the  Czar!  The  only  grievances  you  could 
wring  from  them  by  questioning  on  all  points  was 
against  their  own  local  and  nominally  self-elected 
officials. 

We  passed  the  night  in  the  house  of  a  moujik,  who, 
from  the  peasant's  standpoint,  would  be  neither  rich 
nor  poor.  His  house  was  leaning  sadly  to  one  side 
and  the  back  wall  of  it  had  disappeared,  leaving  the  rear 
rooms  exposed  ;  but  he  owned  a  horse  and  rattletrap 
telega  and  cultivated  land  for  two  souls, — himself  and 


ST.  PETERSBURG. 


21 


wife, — and  was  assessed  taxes  proportionately.  His 
taxes  amounted  to  about  fifteen  rubles  a  year  and 
whatever  share  of  public  work  the  assembly  of  the 
mir  assessed  him.  When  all  the  family  were  at  home 
they  numbered  nine  persons.  The  good  wife  prided 
herself  immensely  on  having  been  a  domestic  in  the 
family  of  "  noble-born  "  people  before  her  marriage. 
She  and  her  husband  ;  their  eldest  daughter  and  her 
husband  ;  the  mother,  an  ancient  dame  ;  two  sons  ;  a 
younger  daughter,  and  a  two-year-old  embryo  moujik, 
who  took  a  tremendous  fancy  to  the  author,  owing  to 
the  bestowal  of  a  lump  of  sugar  on  our  first  acquaint- 
ance, all  occupied  two  stuffy  little  rooms  up-stairs. 

The  greater  part  of  the  space  was  taken  up  by  a 
monster  tiled  stove,  on  the  top  of  which,  our  hostess 
informed  us,  the  entire  family  slept  in  the  winter.  It 
was  difficult  to  see  how  so  many  people  could  manage 
it,  unless  some  of  them  slept  two  deep ;  but  the  woman 
said  there  was  plenty  of  room.  The  chief  room  was 
about  ten  feet  square.  In  it  was  a  bed,  an  old  lounge, 
a  table,  three  chairs,  a  chest  of  drawers,  two  large  brass 
samovars,  four  ikons  or  holy  pictures,  before  one  of 
which  was  a  cup  with  oil  and  taper.  The  ikons  are 
heirlooms  in  the  families  of  the  Russian  peasantry,  as 
also  are  the  samovars.  These  are  the  most  precious 
of  the  moujiks'  household  gods.  There  is  a  saying 
among  them,  "  If  your  house  is  on  fire,  save  the  ikon 
and  samovar  first,  then  the  children."  More  children 
will  come,  they  say,  but  if  the  ikon  and  the  samovar 
are  lost,  the  saints  will  be  angry  about  the  ikon,  and  a 
samovar  costs  many  rubles. 

The  household  cradle  was  a  curiosity.    The  roof  of 


22  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


the  room  was  low.  A  ring  and  staple  were  in  the  cen- 
ter. Through  the  ring  was  thrust  a  pole.  At  one  end 
was  suspended  a  cage-like  cot  for  the  baby,  and  the 
other  end  was  above  the  mother's  pillow.  By  reaching 
up  and  working  the  lever,  the  latest  arrival  in  his  cot 
could  be  danced  up  and  down,  or  swung  about,  pendu- 
lum-fashion, by  his  mother. 


CHAPTER  II. 


TCHUDOVO  AND  THE  PRIST AV. 

THE  day  was  a  holiday  in  Tchudovo. 
We  were  seated  on  a  rude  bench,  talking  to  the 
starosta,  on  the  afternoon  of  May  28.    Although  it 
was  neither  saint's  day  nor  Sunday,  the  peasants  were 
arrayed  in  every  bit  of  cheap  finery  they  possessed. 

The  holiday  was  special.  Sotniac  Paishkoff,  cen- 
turion, or  captain,  of  100  Cossacks,  started  May  7, 
1889,  on  one  of  the  most  remarkable  horseback  rides 
that  had  ever  been  made.  The  greatest  feat  of  this 
kind  heretofore  known  to  the  Russians  was  that  of  a 
military  officer  a  few  years  before,  from  Moscow  to 
Paris,  on  which  ride,  however,  two  horses  were  used. 
Paishkoff's  ride  was  from  Albazinski,  a  station  of  the 
Cossacks  of  the  Amoor,  a  day's  ride  from  the  Pacific 
coast  at  the  mouth  of  the  Amoor,  to  St.  Petersburg. 
The  distance  is  over  seven  thousand  vcrsts,  or  about  five 
thousand  miles,  and  the  trip  was  made  on  one  horse. 

Orders  had  therefore  been  sent  from  St.  Petersburg, 
during  the  latter  part  of  Paishkoff's  journey,  to  have 
every  attention  shown  him,  and  police  escort  provided 
from  day  to  day.  A  small  convoy  of  Cossacks,  from 
the  "  Czarevitch's  Own  "  Cossack  regiment,  were  dis- 
patched to  Novgorod  to  escort  him  in  to  St.  Peters- 
burg, a  four  days'  ride,  and  a  whole  regiment  was  to 

23 


24 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


meet  him  outside  the  capital.  He  was  to  be  promoted 
and  receive  an  order  and  a  pension. 

Paishkoff  was  expected  to  pass  through  Tchudovo 
that  evening.  The  street  was  gay  with  colors,  in  which 
the  red  shirts  of  the  moujiks  predominated.  A  red 
calico  shirt,  black  velvet  trousers,  and  knee-boots,  con- 
stitute the  moujik's  ideal  costume.  The  whole  popu- 
lation of  the  village  was  streaming  leisurely  in  one 
direction.  Fifty  or  more  small  boys  were  marshaled 
in  a  troop  and,  under  the  direction  of  the  school-master, 
marched  in  very  good  step,  singing  lustily  as  they 
tramped,  after  the  manner  of  Russian  soldiers. 

A  deputation  of  old  men  came  up  where  we  were 
sitting  and  proposed  to  the  starosta  that,  for  the  honor 
of  the  mir,  he  should  proceed  along  the  road  at  the 
head  of  the  people  to  meet  and  welcome  Paishkoff. 

"  Nay,  nay,  brothers,"  demurred  the  starosta,  "  when 
the  Cossack  comes  I  will  have  the  samovar  ready  with 
tea  ;  but  from  Novgorod  is  a  long  ride,  and  perhaps  he 
will  not  arrive  before  morning." 

The  starosta  was  right  in  his  surmises.  The  Cossack 
rider  didn't  appear  that  evening.  We  passed  the  night 
in  the  moujik's  house,  and  early  next  morning  hired  our 
host  to  drive  us  out  on  the  Novgorod  road  to  meet 
him. 

We  met  the  popular  hero  a  few  miles  out,  and,  turn- 
ing, kept  pace  with  him  back  to  Tchudovo.  With  him 
were  the  escort  from  the  Czarevitch's  regiment,  an 
infantry  officer  from  Vladimir,  a  rural  mounted  police- 
man, and  a  couple  of  Russian  newspaper  correspond- 
ents. 

Paishkoff  turned  out  to  be  a  small,  wiry  man,  twenty- 


TCHUDOVO  AND  THE  PRISTAV. 


25 


seven  years  old,  with  a  pleasant  face  of  almost  mahog- 
any darkness  from  the  long  exposure  to  the  dry,  wintry 
winds  of  Siberia.  He  wore  the  Cossack  lamb's-wool 
hat,  leather  jacket  and  trousers,  with  a  broad  yellow 
stripe  down  the  latter,  and  heavy  jack-boots.  He  was 
armed  with  a  British  bull-dog  revolver  and  a  small 
sword. 

His  horse  was  a  big-barreled,  stocky  gray  pony, 
about  fourteen  hands  high,  the  exact  counterpart  of 
horses  one  sees  by  the  score  in  the  broncho  herds 
of  Wyoming  and  Colorado.  He  was  well  chosen 
for  his  task.  He  was  all  barrel,  hams,  and  shoul- 
ders. His  neck  and  head  seemed  scarcely  to  be 
parts  of  the  same  horse.  His  pace  was  a  fast,  ambling 
walk  that  carried  him  over  the  ground  at  five  miles  an 
hour  and  left  the  big  chargers  of  the  Czarevitch's  Cos- 
sacks far  to  the  rear.  The  escort  had  to  trot  occa. 
sionally  to  catch  up.  The  gallant  little  gray  was  as 
sleek  and  well-conditioned  as  if  he  had  just  come  out 
of  a  clover  pasture. 

Paishkoff  raised  his  cap  in  reply  to  our  salutation,  and 
when  my  companion  said  that  1  was  from  America, 
lifted  it  again.  "  We  belong  almost  to  the  same  part 
of  the  world,"  said  he,  smilingly,  "  only  the  sea  is 
between  us.  We  have  both  traveled  a  long  way,  you 
by  ship  and  train,  I  on  horseback."  The  Cossack 
officer,  though  pleasant,  was  inclined  to  be  rather  taci- 
turn, and  we  talked  more  with  the  newspaper  men 
than  with  him,  calling  upon  him  occasionally  for  con- 
firmation. One  of  the  reporters  was  Sergie  Riskin, 
from  the  Moscow  Listok  ;  the  other  was  the  Novgorod 
correspondent  of  the  St.  Petersburg  Novosti.  The 


26  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


latter  gentleman  handed  me  a  card,  on  which  his  name 
and  profession  were  set  forth  modestly  as  follows: 

"  Neil  Ivanovitch  Bogdanoffsky,  correspondent  Nor- 
thern Telegraph  Agency,  of  the  gazette  Novosti,  and 
of  the  Society  of  Russian  Dramatic  Authors  and 
Operatic  Composers,  Novgorod.  Own  house  and  own 
horse." 

The  last  item  of  Mr.  Bogdanoffsky's  identity  meant 
that  he  lived  in  his  own  house  and  rode  his  own  horse  ; 
that  is  to  say,  he  was  a  free-lance  as  distinct  from  Mr. 
Sergie  Riskin  and  kindred  members  of  the  profession, 
who  are  employees  at  a  few  rubles  a  month  and  a 
house  to  live  in,  and  who,  when  called  upon  to  under- 
take a  horseback  journey,  have  to  ride  a  hired  animal 
or  one  belonging  to  the  newspaper. 

Mr.  Riskin  did  most  of  the  talking.  Alluding  to 
the  Cossack's  taciturnity :  "  Paishkoff  is  a  man  of 
deeds,"  said  he,  "  rather  than  words.  He  is  small  in 
stature,  yet  bigger  than  all  the  Cossacks  of  his  escort 
put  together." 

Riskin  had  accompanied  the  Cossack  from  Nijni- 
Novgorod,  sending  daily  reports  of  his  progress  to  the 
Listok.  Whether  a  man  of  deeds  himself,  he  was  most 
decidedly  a  man  of  words.  He  was  jolly,  yet  in  de- 
spair. His  paper,  he  said,  had  given  him  1500  rubles 
to  cover  expenses  from  Nijni-Novgorod  td  St.  Peters- 
burg, and,  "  posheevnoi !  "  he  had  but  eighty  left.  All 
the  money  had  gone  drinking  vodka  and  having  good 
times  with  police  officers  and  others  along  the  route ; 
and  now  what  would  he  be  able  to  do  at  St.  Peters- 
burg, where,  for  the  honor  and  glory  of  his  paper,  he 
was  expected  to  drive  out  in  grand  style  to  meet 


rCUUDOVO  AND  THE  PRISTAV. 


27 


Paishkoff  as  he  neared  the  end  of  his  ride,  and  make  a 
lavish  display  of  the  Listolzs  wealth  and  enthusiasm? 

Sergie  rattled  on,  pausing  very  reluctantly  and  only 
for  an  instant  now  and  then,  to  enable  my  companion 
and  interpreter  to  ask  a  question.  His  nervous  ten- 
sion, and  his  effort  to  talk  faster  than  the  movements 
of  his  lips  could  frame  his  words  and  sentences,  was 
almost  painful.  Paishkoff,  he  informed  us,  was  a  re- 
markable man  in  many  ways.  While  he,  his  comrade 
of  the  Novosti,  and  almost  everybody  else  he  had  ever 
met,  drank  vodka,  the  Cossack  officer  refused  to  drink 
anything  stronger  than  kwass,  a  kind  of  weak  beer 
made  from  rye  bread. 

"  At  Novgorod,"  said  Mr.  Riskin,  "  there  was  a 
grand  service  of  prayer  before  a  celebrated  ikon  in 
honor  of  Paishkoff's  safe  arrival,  and  after  the  prayers 
came  a  jollification,  when  the  officers,  the  priests,  and 
all  of-  us  got  drunk  and  happy — all  but  Paishkoff. 
Paishkoff  would  drink  nothing  but  kwass  and  tea;  he's 
a  wonderful  man.  He  eats  what  he  likes,  just  like 
other  people.  He  wears  undergarments  of  mineral 
wool;  over  that  a  linen  shirt,  which  he  gets  washed 
every  two  weeks.  During  the  winter  he  wore  a 
cholera-belt  to  protect  his  stomach  from  the  cold,  and 
overall  a  leathern  suit.  He  rises  at  five  in  the  morn- 
ing, pops  a  lump  of  sugar  in  his  mouth,  and  drinks  tea 
with  lemon  in  it  before  starting. 

"  A  few  days  after  starting  he  was  caught  in  a  bliz- 
zard and  got  lost.  He  was  nearly  frozen  to  death,  and 
would  never  have  pulled  through  but  for  his  horse's 
intelligence.  He  gave  his  horse  the  rein,  and  although 
it  was  pitch  dark  and  the  air  full  of  blinding  snow,  the 


28  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


animal  found  his  way  back  to  the  last  station.  He 
rode  alone  as  far  as  Tomsk,  from  which  point  he  has 
been  assisted  by  the  police.  His  only  sickness  has 
been  a  touch  of  influenza.  He  had  experienced  forty 
degrees  of  frost  (about  fifty  degrees  below  zero,  Fahr.) 
but  thinks  winter  the  best  time  to  travel  in  Siberia  ; 
the  roads  are  then  hard  and  good,  and  the  cold  stimu- 
lates the  horse  to  travel.  He  has  met  with  no  adven- 
tures beyond  the  blizzard.  Wolves  ? — he  hasn't  seen 
a  wolf,  and  he  has  never  fired  his  revolver.  He  has 
promised  to  give  me  his  notes  and  I'm  going  to  write 
a  book  about  his  journey." 

We  turned  from  the  versatile  representative  of  the 
Moscow  Listok  to  the  hero  of  the  ride.  "Sotniac," 
said  my  companion,  "Mr.  Stevens  wants  to  send  word 
about  you  to  America.  Tell  us  the  motive  of  your 
great  journey.    Is  it  to  decide  a  bet  ?" 

"  No,  no,"  replied  Paishkoff,  "  only  an  Englishman 
or  an  American  would  do  such  a  thing  for  a  bet.  My 
object  is  to  prove  the  great  powers  of  endurance 
possessed  by  the  horses  of  the  Amoor." 

"  How  much  will  you  take  for  your  horse  when  you 
get  to  St.  Petersburg  ?  " 

"  Money  again,"  returned  the  Cossack,  reproachfully  ; 
"  it  would  be  a  sin  to  exchange  this  horse  for  money, 
after  what  he  has  done.  All  the  money  in  America 
wouldn't  induce  me  to  sell  him.  He  will  be  taken 
great  care  of  for  the  rest  of  his  life — pensioned  off." 

"  And  you  ? — you,  too,  will  be  pensioned,  I  sup- 
pose." 

"  We  shall  know  better  about  that  at  St.  Peters- 
burg." 


TCHUDOVO  AND  THE  PRISTAV. 


29 


As  we  neared  Tchudovo,  the  whole  population  of  the 
commune  was  assembled  at  the  entrance  to  the  broad, 
long  street.  A  beggar  rushed  up  to  the  Cossack's 
horse  and  flung  himself  on  the  ground  before  it,  as  if 
begging  its  rider  to  trample  him  under  its  hoofs. 
Paishkoff  tossed  him  a  coin  without  halting,  and  the 
pony  swerved  meekly  to  avoid  stepping  on  the  man. 

The  women  crossed  themselves  and  the  men  and 
boys  removed  their  hats.  The  old  moujiks  gave  the 
cue  and  three  hearty  cheers  went  up  for  the  bold 
"  Kazak  "  as  he  rode  past.  He  acknowledged  the 
honor  by  holding  his  hand  to  his  forehead.  The  eyes 
of  the  Cossack  escort  from  the  Czarevitch's  regiment 
roamed  wolfishly  over  the  picturesque  gathering  of 
village  damsels,  turning  in  their  saddles  to  prolong 
their  scrutiny  as  the  crowd  followed  behind.  The 
school-master  and  his  brigade  of  small  urchins  tramped 
solidly  in  ranks,  four  deep,  singing  noisily. 

The  starosta,  true  to  his  idea  of  remaining  at  his 
post  and  extending  the  hospitality  of  his  samovar,  in- 
vited Paishkoff  and  his  escort  to  dismount  at  his  house. 
They  refused  to  halt,  however,  and  the  officer  of  the 
Cossacks  paid  him  scant  courtesy,  as  though  rebuking 
him  for  not  coming  out  to  welcome  them  as  the  others 
had  done. 

The  reporters  sent  word  to  their  newspapers  that 
an  American  had  met  Paishkoff  and  offered  him  30,000 
rubles  for  his  pony,  for  the  purpose  of  taking  it  to 
America  to  exhibit !  That  truthful  item  went  all  over 
Russia. 

Before  leaving  Tchudovo,  we  made  the  acquaintance 
of  the  pristav,  or  chief  of  police,  of  the  district.  The 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


pristav  invited  us  to  spend  the  evening  at  his  house. 
Vodka,  raw  salt  fish,  salted  cucumbers,  cheese,  tea,  and 
cigarettes  were  provided  by  our  host,  who  turned  out 
to  be  a  man  of  considerable  education  and  of  no  mean 
order  of  intelligence.  He  had  been  a  school-master, 
manager  of  an  estate,  principal  of  a  reformatory  for 
boys,  and  was  now  chief  of  police  of  a  district  about 
forty  miles  square,  containing  a  population  of  50,000 
people.  I  had,  of  course,  designs  on  the  pristav's 
knowledge  of  his  country  and  its  institutions,  and  led 
the  conversation  into  that  channel.  He  was  a  genial 
and  communicative  soul;  a  thorough  Russian  in  that 
absence  of  reserve,  when  the  hand  of  good  fellowship 
had  been  given,  that  is  one  of  the  national  traits.  A 
Russian  police  officer  is  compelled,  nolens  volens,  to 
suspect  the  stranger  on  principle ;  but  approach  him 
genially,  drink  tea  or  vodka  with  him,  the  social  heart 
that  beats  universal  in  the  Russian  breast  is  touched, 
and  he  is  yours,  believing  in  you,  confiding  in  you  for 
the  time,  though  he  may  grow  suspicious  again  after 
you  are  gone. 

In  talking  of  international  politics,  the  pristav  of 
Tchudovo  was  as  epigrammatic  as  interesting. 

"  The  only  enemy  we  have,"  said  he,  "  is  Germany. 
Austria  is  an  ingrate.  Several  times  have  we  stepped 
into  the  breach  and  saved  her  ;  and  our  reward  is  that 
she  arrays  herself  against  us.  England  doesn't  under- 
stand us,  and  so  she  hates  us.  The  Hebrew  is  our 
greatest  economic  question.  The  countries  of  the 
future  are  America  and  Russia.  Our  people  have 
more  good  qualities  than  bad.  Our  faults  are  great, 
but  our  virtues  are  greater.    Our  prisons  are  good,  and 


TCHUDOVO  AND  THE  PRIST  A  V. 


31 


will,  in  time,  be  better  than  the  prisons  of  any  country 
in  the  world."- 

These  were  some  of  the  poignant  shots  directed  at 
the  writer  by  the  pristav,  in  reply  to  questions.  Like 
all  Russians  whom  I  afterward  met,  he  was  enthusiastic 
and  loyal  to  his  country. 

"  People  at  a  distance,"  said  he,  "  remember  our 
faults  and  forget  our  virtues.  We  have  plenty  of 
both.  Our  intentions  are  good,  but  our  methods  are 
faulty.  As  a  people  we  have  no  talent  for  detail,  and 
for  that  reason  our  administration  is  defective.  We 
are  the  kindest-hearted  people  in  the  world,  but  a 
Russian  is  too  easily  contented  with  things  as  they  are. 
We  are  not  thrifty  like  the  French,  nor  economical 
and  plodding  like  the  Germans,  nor  progressive  and 
energetic  like  the  Americans.  You  will  see,  if  you 
travel  through  Russia,  colonies  of  Germans  scattered 
here  and  there,  and  you  will  be  astonished  at  the  con- 
trast between  them  and  our  own  people.  The  Russian 
peasant  will  be  living  in  a  tumble-down  house,  and  his 
daily  fare  will  be  black  bread  and  cabbage  soup.  The 
Germans  will  be  better  fed,  better  housed,  better 
clothed,  their  fences  will  be  neat,  their  gardens  will  be 
full  of  vegetables,  and  they  will  be  rapidly  growing  rich. 
You  would  think  that  the  Russian  moujik  would  envy 
his.  prosperous  neighbor  and  follow  his  example,  but  he 
seldom  does.  He  even  considers  himself  superior, 
and  laughs  in  a  good-natured  way,  saying,  with  pride, 
as  he  thinks  of  his  hard  fare,  'What  is  death  to  the 
foreigner  is  life  to  the  Russian.'  With  plenty  of  rich 
land  in  his  back  yard,  he  doesn't  even  take  the  trouble 
to  grow  vegetables,  as  you  have  seen  for  yourself  in 


32 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Tchudovo.  You  may  admire  the  German  colonist  and 
call  him  wise,  but  the  moujik  would  win  your  heart 
for  his  good  nature  and  generous  impulses.  If  you 
were  to  fall  into  the  river  the  German  would  think 
twice  before  jumping  in  after  you  ;  but  the  Russian 
wouldn't  even  stop  to  consider  whether  he  knew  how 
to  swim  before  plunging  in." 

I  felt  very  much  like  summing  up  all  that  the  pristav 
had  said  about  the  moujik,  except  his  generosity,  in  the 
one  cynical  comment  "laziness,"  yet  that  same  morn- 
ing I  had  seen  laborers  at  work  at  2.30,  and  had  been 
assured  that  in  the  summer  season,  the  "white  nights," 
when  you  can  see  to  read  a  newspaper  in  the  streets  of 
St.  Petersburg  at  midnight,  the  moujik  is  astir  twenty 
hours  out  of  the  twenty-four. 

On  the  subject  of  official  Russia  the  pristav  was  on 
his  own  ground,  and  spoke  at  length.  He  referred  to 
himself  as  an  unit  of  the  system.  In  him  and  his  posi- 
tion, he  said,  we  had  before  us  a  fair  sample  of  the  en- 
tire official  system  of  Russia.  He  was  Chief  of  Police 
over  a  district  as  large  as  two  American  counties,  and 
was  held  responsible  for  the  acts  of  50,000  people. 
Half  the  time  he  was  on  horseback  or  in  a  troika,  and 
he  had  been  without  sleep  for  three  nights  at  a  stretch. 
He  had  more  than  a  thousand  documents  pigeon-holed 
in  his  office  that  needed  his  attention,  yet  the  author- 
ities at  St.  Petersburg  thought  nothing  of  taking  up 
his  time  in  the  most  trivial  things.  With  hundreds  of 
important  grievances,  criminal  cases,  and  what  not  on 
hand,  one  half  of  which  he  would  not  be  able  to  at- 
tend to  if  he  never  slept  nor  rested,  he  had  just  re- 
ceived orders  from  St.  Petersburg  to  personally  super- 


TCHUDOVO  AND  THE  PRISTAV. 


33 


intend  the  safe  conduct  of  the  Cossack  rider,  Paishkoff, 
through  his  district.  For  two  days  his  precious  time 
had  been  taken  up  riding  ahead  of  Paishkoff,  from  vil- 
lage to  village,  arranging  for  his  food,  even  cooking  it 
himself,  and  seeing  that  everything  was  done  for  his 
comfort.  Such  things  as  these  were  more  important 
in  the  eyes  of  some  one  in  St.  Petersburg  than 
the  affairs  of  his  district,  and  it  would  be  as  much 
as  the  pristav's  official  head  was  worth  to  neglect 
them. 

While  he  believed  paternal  government  was  the  best 
for  the  Russians,  he  cited  his  own  case  as  an  instance 
of  its  faults.  The  people  of  his  district  came  to  him 
like  children  to  a  father,  and  for  a  father  to  listen  to  the 
grievances  and  adjust  the  differences  of  50,000  children 
was  a  physical  impossibility.  They  came  to  him  about 
everything.  The  peasants  are  required  by  law  to  in- 
sure their  houses.  If  a  peasant  neglected  or  refused 
to  do  this  the  starosta  of  the  mir  would  send  him  a 
complaint.  If  there  was  trouble  about  the  taxes  it 
was  the  same.  Forest  fires  were  a  stock  nuisance  that 
kept  him  riding  like  a  Cossack  from  one  part  of  the 
district  to  another. 

Murders  were  one  of  the  common  crimes  among  the 
moujiks.  These  he  had  to  investigate  and  report  on. 
Domestic  troubles  were  common.  The  young  men, 
who  married  at  eighteen  or  nineteen,  would  be  taken 
away  for  soldiers  at  twenty-one.  The  young  grass- 
widows  left  behind  would  behave  scandalously,  and 
the  parents  of  the  absent  husbands  would  complain  to 
him,  expecting  him  to  set  matters  right  by  putting 
them  in  prison.    Ten  men  couldn't  do  the  work  he 


34 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


had  to  and  attend  to  it  properly,  yet  his  salary  was 
but  seventy  rubles  a  month. 

The  pristav  scouted  the  idea  that  Russian  officers 
were  naturally  any  more  dishonest  than  others.  The 
trouble  with  most  of  them  is,  he  said,  that  their  salaries 
are  simply  not  sufficient  to  keep  them  from  starving. 
They  are  obliged  to  take  bribes  in  order  to  live.  Yet 
if  they  are  found  out,  they  are  punished  and  disgraced. 
Of  all  the  overworked  and  underpaid  people  in  the 
world,  the  pristav  thought,  Russian  officials  walked  off 
with  the  honors.  It  was  the  same  in  every  district 
in  the  empire — thousands  of  cases  pigeon-holed  be- 
cause there  were  not  officers  enough  to  dispose  of 
them. 

We  spoke  of  prisons  and  Siberia.  The  pristav  had 
never  heard  of  Mr.  Kennan  or  the  Century  Magazine. 
This  was  not  surprising,  as  his  information  of  the  outer 
world  was  all  obtained  through  the  medium  of  the 
Russian  press.  Yet  it  seemed  curious  in  a  man  of 
exceptional  intelligence  and  good  education,  living 
but  seventy  miles  from  St.  Petersburg.  During  the 
past  year  five  people  had  been  exiled  to  Siberia  from 
his  district.  That  was  about  the  average  number  per 
annum.  All  of  them  were  either  criminals  or  rogues, 
sent  away  by  the  mirs  for  persistent  worthlessness. 
Not  one  was  a  "  political." 

About  the  prisons  in  Siberia  the  pristav  didn't  know. 
He  had  never  been  there,  he  said,  and  so  could  not 
speak  from  personal  knowledge.  He  had  heard  that 
some  of  them  were  not  in  good  order.  But  the  pris- 
ons of  European  Russia  he  knew,  having  been  pristav 
in  two  districts  and  visited  many  others.    He  begged 


TCHUDOVO  AMD  THE  PRISTAV. 


35 


me  to  believe  nothing  that  I  might  hear  in  condemna- 
tion of  the  Russian  prisons  proper,  for  he  knew  them 
to  be  as  good  as  the  prisons  of  any  country  in  Europe. 
The  authorities  were  continually  devising  ways  and 
means  of  improving  prisons  and  the  treatment  of  pris- 
oners, and  he  would  be  glad  to  show  me  the  prisons  in 
his  district  any  time  I  wished  to  see  them. 

The  next  day  I  met  him  at  the  railway  station,  when 
the  subject  of  prisons  came  up  again.  The  pristav, 
afraid  lest  I  might  leave  with  erroneous  ideas,  invited 
me  to  inspect  his  Tchudovo  prison  before  going.  I 
was  afraid  of  missing  the  train,  however,  and  declined. 
I  had  no  reason  to  doubt  his  word,  nor  was  the  condi- 
tion of  a  provincial  prison  a  hundred  versts  from  St. 
Peterburg  of  much  importance. 

The  pristav  laughed  at  the  idea  of  Russia  wanting 
India. 

"  That  was  Skobeloff's  idea,"  he  said.  "  Skobeloff  was 
a  soldier,  not  a  statesman.  He  found  it  a  good  thing 
to  juggle  with  in  our  negotiations  with  England,  but 
the  idea  has  never  been  seriously  entertained  by  sen- 
sible Russians.  We  hate  England  because  she  persists 
in  hating  us;  but  if  we  go  to  war  it  will  be  with  Ger- 
many.   She  is  our  only  natural  enemy." 

It  is  always  interesting  and  instructive  to  hear  the 
ideas  of  people  about  themselves  and  their  country. 
It  is  a  lesson  one  should  always  take,  if  possible,  in  a 
new  field,  before  beginning  the  serious  work  of  investi- 
gation on  one's  own  behalf.  My  brief  visit  to  Tchu- 
dovo, and  the  talks  with  the  moujiks  and  the  police  of- 
ficer were  the  preliminary  steps  to  an  extensive  tour  of 
investigation.    I  had  determined  to  ride  on  horseback 


3* 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


from  Moscow  to  the  Black  Sea ;  then  return  by  way  of 
the  Don  and  the  Volga. 

It  was  deemed  that  the  best  plan  of  getting  into 
genuine  contact  with  the  Russian  people,  and  of  study- 
ing them  and  the  way  in  which  they  are  governed,  at 
close  range,  would  be  to  take  a  long  horseback  journey 
through  the  country.  This  being  an  extraordinary 
proposition,  and  everything  out  of  the  ordinary  being 
always  regarded  with  suspicion  in  Russia,  difficulties, 
of  course,  presented  themselves  at  the  outset.  Ken- 
nan's  exposures  had  prejudiced  the  Minister  of  the  In- 
terior against  American  correspondents  in  particular, 
and  to  approach  him  for  permission  to  undertake  an 
extraordinary  ride  on  horseback,  through  the  heart  of 
Russia,  would  probably  be  equivalent  to  putting  one's 
head  in  the  lion's  mouth.  Permission  would  be  re- 
fused ;  or,  if  granted,  care  would  be  taken  that  every- 
thing should  be  prepared  along  the  route,  in  advance, 
to  prevent  one  doing  anything  in  the  nature  of  honest 
investigation. 

It  was  resolved  to  ignore  the  authorities  entirely, 
and — well,  simply  go  ahead.  This  plan  had  proved 
successful  in  other  parts  of  the  world,  why  not  in 
Russia  also  ? 


CHAPTER  III. 


PLANNING   THE  RIDE. 

MOSCOW,  then,  was  the  first  objective  point,  and 
along  the  length  of  Czar  Nicholas's  famous  "  ruler- 
railway,"  between  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow,  a  few 
"  impressions  by  the  way  "  of  Russian  railway  travel- 
ing may  not  be  out  of  place.  Every  reader  knows  the 
story  of  how  the  St.  Petersburg-Moscow  Railway  was 
surveyed  in  one  minute  by  the  Emperor,  with  a  ruler,  a 
pencil,  and  a  map.  A  traveler  once  compared  this 
road  to  the  pyramids  of  Egypt  as  a  monument  of  Im- 
perial will.  Times  have  improved,  however,  in  the 
past  five  thousand  years.  It  is  still  possible  for  a  Czar 
of  Russia  to  draw  a  straight  line  across  a  map  and 
order  a  railway  to  be  built  along  it,  but  these  days  not 
even  the  Russians  would  stand  a  pyramid. 

To  the  American  popular  mind  this  railway  is  a 
gigantic  freak  of  autocratic  power,  toying  recklessly 
with  the  resources  of  a  great  nation.  Those  informed 
of  Russian  affairs  are  aware  that  the  rulcr-and-pencil 
survey  was  the  result  of  the  Czar's  disgust  at  the 
efforts  of  the  officials,  intrusted  to  draw  up  the  plans,  to 
serve  their  own  personal  ends.  A  gentleman  in  St. 
Petersburg  told  the  author  that  the  preliminary  sur- 
vey, as  laid  before  the  Czar,  twisted  about  the  country 
like  a  serpent's  trail,  for  no  other  reason  than  to  en- 

37 


38 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


hance  the  value  of  the  estates  of  the  survey  officers, 
and  made  the  distance  from  St.  Petersburg  to  Mos- 
cow nearer  1500  miles  than  400.  Like  many  other 
things,  moreover,  which  from  a  distance  assume  fan- 
tastic proportions,  the  "  ruler-railway"  turns  out  to  be 
less  of  a  freak  than  one  would  imagine,  upon  a  closer 
acquaintance. 

It  runs  through  a  country  almost  as  level  as  a  floor, 
and  with  a  population  of  but  twenty  five  to  the  square 
verst.  Railways  wind  about  to  avoid  engineering  dif- 
ficulties and  to  accommodate  cities  and  towns.  As 
there  were  none  of  the  former,  and  next  to  none  of  the 
latter  to  consider,  and  as  the  termini  were  the  two 
greatest  cities  of  the  empire,  the  Czar  was  at  least  as 
much  of  an  economist  as  an  autocrat  in  making  his 
famous  survey. 

For  an  hour  prior  to  the  departure  of  the  train  the 
crowd  at  the  station  was  enormous.  There  is  as  much 
leave-taking,  kissing,  and  shedding  of  tears  at  the  de- 
parture of  a  Russian  train  as  there  is  at  the  sailing  of 
an  Atlantic  liner.  To  nine  tenths  of  the  Russians  a 
journey  of  a  hundred  miles  by  rail  is  a  tremendous 
event,  and  each  passenger  has  probably  a  dozen  friends 
who  have  come  to  see  them  off. 

The  hum,  bustle,  and  buzz  as  the  time  for  the  train 
to  leave  draws  near  is  astonishing  to  an  American. 
Rough  men  and  stout  old  women  hug  one  another 
with  the  fervor  of  bears,  and  half  the  people  are  either 
kissing  each  other  or  shedding  tears.  The  average 
Russian  face  of  the  middle  and  lower  classes  is  singu- 
larly vacant  and  devoid  of  sentiment.  But  at  the 
departure  of  the  train  the  overflow  of  emotion  is  a 


PLANNING  THE  RIDE. 


3' 9 


revelation  to  the  foreigner,  One  is  bewildered  and 
yet  amused  at  the  many  ways  the  people  have  of  dis- 
playing their  affection,  one  toward  another,  and  the 
utter  absence  of  restraint. 

Not  the  least  amusing  thing  to  the  beholder  are  the 
ludicrous  mistakes  of  the  uninitiated.  Several  warn- 
ings are  given  before  the  train  leaves,  and  half  the  peo- 
ple think  each  warning  the  last.  I  remember  one  wo- 
man who  was  saying  the  parting  words  to  her  husband 
through  the#open  window  of  her  car.  The  bell  rung. 
The  lady  passenger  leaned  out  ;  the  husband's  arms 
twined  lovingly  around  her  neck  ;  their  lips  met — one  ! 
two  ! !  three  ! !  ! — ah  !  Between  the  first  kiss  and  the 
third  the  woman's  mouth  had  expanded  from  a  tempt- 
ing smile  to  a  grin  so  broad  that  a  fourth  was  impossi- 
ble. So,  drawing  back  into  the  car,  both  expected  the 
train  to  move  off. 

The  train  didn't  move,  however,  and  an  officer  told 
the  man  they  had  fifteen  minutes  to  wait  yet  and 
that  there  would  be  another  signal.  Instead  of  one,  it 
turned  out  that  there  were  two.  And  so  this  loving 
couple  treated  the  subscriber,  and  an  Englishman  who 
was  seeing  me  off,  to  the  above  delightful  little  tab- 
leaux no  less  than  three  times,  two  of  which  were  the 
result  of  false  alarms. 

The  Russian  passenger  coaches  are  a  compromise 
between  the  English  and  American.  You  can  pass 
from  one  end  of  the  train  to  the  other  as  with  us,  but 
by  closing  a  door  you  can  shut  yourself  up  in  a  little 
apartment,  as  in  England.  Only  forty  pounds  of  bag- 
gage is  carried  free,  but  bundles  are  allowed  to  be 
taken  in  the  passenger  cars.    The  consequence  is  that 


40  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


every  nook  of  the  car  is  stuffed  with  bundles,  band- 
boxes, baskets,  and  valises.  Economical  old  peasants, 
who  have  been  to  the  capital,  perhaps,  for  the  only 
visit  of  their  lives,  struggle  into  the  car  with  a  dozen 
bundles  and  boxes  to  avoid  paying  anything  for  bag- 
gage. The  train  is  miles  away  ere  the  people  get 
comfortably  settled  down. 

Three  fourths  of  the  people  travel  third  class. 
Second  class  is  as  comfortable  as  first,  and  your  fellow- 
passengers  here  are  military  officers  who. live  on  their 
salaries,  well-to-do  merchants,  and  the  better  class  of 
citizens  generally.  First-class  passengers  are  foreign 
travelers  or  natives  of  wealth,  ostentation,  or  distinc- 
tion. 

In  a  seat  near  me  were  a  couple  of  students  going  to 
spend  their  summer  vacation  in  the  Valdai  Hills. 
Both  could  speak  English.  They  talked  freely.  One 
of  them  gave  me  a  new  version  of  a  late  trouble  with 
the  students — an  outbreak  in  St.  Petersburg  and  Mos- 
cow. One  of  the  students,  he  said,  had  received  a 
letter  from  a  lady  convict  in  Siberia,  telling  of  the 
miseries  she  and  others  endured.  The  students  there- 
upon drew  up  a  memorial  to  the  Emperor  and  pre- 
sented it  to  one  of  the  professors  to  be  delivered.  The 
professor  advised  them  to  trouble  their  heads  with 
their  own  business,  and  tore  it  up.  A  row  ensued,  the 
police  and  Cossacks  were  ordered  out,  and  "  two 
thousand  students  were  sent  to  Siberia." 

Fortunately  my  experience  of  the  East  had  familiar- 
ized me  with  the  recklessness  and  unreliability  of  its 
people's  tongues  in  regard  to  figures,  distances,  and 
time.    The  Russian  seems  as  much  an  Oriental  as  the 


PLANNING  THE  RIDE.  41 

Persian  in  this  respect.  The  rest  of  the  story  was,  not 
unlikely,  true  enough,  but  the  "  two  thousand  stu- 
dents sent  to  Siberia"  was  worthy  of  the  Persian  who, 
within  a  stone's  throw  of  the  mud  walls  of  Teheran, 
told  me  that  they  were  of  marble. 

Many  of  the  exaggerated  stories  that  reach  us  from 
Russia  and  the  East  are  the  result  of  the  European 
correspondent  taking  the  statements  of  the  natives  too 
literally. 

If  you  are  traveling  in  Turkey  or  Persia,  the  native, 
believing  you  to  be  anxious  to  get  to  your  destination, 
will  assure  you  that  it  is  but  an  hour  away,  even 
though  it  be  several  days.  In  like  manner,  these  Rus- 
sian students,  knowing  that,  as  an  American,  I  was 
probably  interested  in  the  question  of  students  being 
sent  to  Siberia,  evolved  from  their  inner  consciousness 
the  story  of  the  two  thousand. 

Neither  Turks  nor  Russians  expect  you  to  accept 
their  statements  literally.  A  polite  desire  to  please, 
to  say  something  that  they  imagine  will  fall  pleasantly 
an  your  ear,  is  the  motif,  in  so  far  as  there  is  one  ;  but 
with  them  both,  the  tongue  is  more  often  but  the  vehi- 
cle for  the  ventilation  of  the  vaguest  imaginings.  In- 
tellectual apathy  is  the  explanation.  Ask  six  different 
officials,  about  a  railway  station,  as  to  the  time  of  de- 
parture of  a  certain  train,  and,  whether  in  Turkey  or 
Russia,  you  will  be  very  sure  to  get  a  half-dozen  con- 
flicting replies.  Too  careless  to  remember  and  too 
lazy  of  brain  to  reflect,  the  answer  will  be  the  time  they 
happen  to  think  of  first.  In  our  conception  of  the 
Russians  we  are,  I  think,  too  apt  to  neglect  this  trait 
of  their  character. 


42  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


If  the  Russian  is  lazy,  however,  he  is  far  from  being 
dull.  The  number  of  people  one  meets  who  under- 
stand several  languages  is  astonishing.  Across  the 
aisle  from  us  sat  an  officer  and  a  young  lady  com- 
panion. My  attention  was  attracted  to  the  latter,  be- 
fore our  train  had  gone  far,  by  reason  of  the  number  of 
cigarettes  she  smoked.  She  was  almost  a  chain-smoker, 
lighting  one  cigarette  after  another  from  the  stump  of 
the  one  just  consumed.  The  students,  seeing  that  I 
was  interested,  made  some  remark  about  the  custom 
of  smoking  as  indulged  in  by  the  ladies  of  Russia.  We 
talked  on  a  while,  and  all  agreed  that  the  habit  was 
more  likely  to  grow  on  a  woman  than  a  man,  and  that 
for  a  young  lady  to  permit  herself  to  become  a  ciga- 
rette devotee  was  a  mistake.  At  this  juncture,  the  fair 
smoker  could  keep  her  countenance  no  longer.  She 
had  understood  all  that  we  had  said  !  Before  reaching 
Moscow  I  discovered  that  fully  one  half  the  passengers 
in  my  car  knew  English !  Now,  a  Russian  might 
knock  about  the  United  States  for  six  months  without 
falling  in  with  anybody  who  could  talk  with  him  in 
his  own  tongue. 

The  idea  these  students  had  of  Russia's  international 
politics  was  that  everybody  hated  her  except  France 
and  the  United  States.  It  sounded  queer  that  des- 
potic Russia  should  find  friends  only  in  these  two 
governmental  antitheses  to  herself. 

I  asked  them  which  they  considered  the  better 
government  of  the  two,  that  of  the  United  States  or 
Russia. 

"  Russia,"  they  said. 

"  Why?" 


PLANNING  THE  RIDE. 


43 


"  Because  if  one  man  kills  another,  you  hang  him. 
If  a  Russian  commits  murder,  we  only  put  him  in 
prison  and  we  don't  care  much  if  he  escapes  alto- 
gether !  " 

"  But  you  send  political  offenders  to  Siberia." 

"  It  is  true,  for  to  plot  against  the  Czar  is  treason, 
and  treason  in  other  countries  is  punishable  with 
death."  Strange  to  say,  I  had  heard  this  same  view  of 
the  case  several  times  since  my  arrival  in  Russia.  It 
is  curious  logic  from  our  point  of  view  that  a  govern- 
ment is  good  because  it  lays  a  light  hand  on  the  mur- 
derer and  a  heavy  one  on  a  political  offender. 

But  I  am  wandering  away  from  the  railway. 

The  result  of  the  Emperor  Nicholas's  arbitrary 
survey  is  that  many  of  the  stopping  places  are  nothing 
but  platforms  for  the  taking  on  and  putting  off  of  pas- 
sengers and  freight  for  distant  points.  Such  stations 
as  there  are,  are  of  wood,  comfortable  and  artistic 
structures,  where  painters  with  yellow  paint  seem  to  be 
always  painting  the  sides,  and  painters  with  red  paint 
always  painting  the  roofs.  Small  parks  and  gardens, 
and  even  fountains,  embellish  the  two  or  three  more 
pretentious  stations  along  the  route. 

At  all  the  stations  the  buffets  are  excellent,  and  the 
service  reasonable.  The  railway  buffets  are  one  of  the 
best  things  in  Russia.  In  the  larger  cities,  a  great 
many  people  go  there  to  eat  instead  of  to  restaurants. 
The  privileges  of  the  buffets  are  let  out  to  large 
caterers,  like  the  Spiers  &  Pond  railway  buffets  in 
England.    The  results  in  Russia  are  excellent. 

The  waiters  are  chiefly  Tartars, — bright,  attentive 
young  men, — who,  I  believe,  receive  no  salary,  but 


44 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


depend  on  tips  for  their  remuneration.  The  Tartars, 
who  three  or  four  centuries  ago  were  dominating  the 
country,  and  at  one  time  enslaved  and  persecuted  the 
Russians,  have  now  become  table  waiters  in  the 
country.  Nearly  all  the  large  hotels,  as  well  as  the 
railway  restaurants,  have  Tartar  waiters.  They  form 
a  guild,  or  artel,  and  their  numbers  are  regularly 
recruited  by  young  boys,  who  are  brought  from  the 
Tartar  villages  of  the  Volga  provinces.  Making  them- 
selves useful  among  the  young  men,  at  a  big  railway 
restaurant  or  hotel  dining-room,  you  see  two  or  three 
small  boys,  yellow-cheeked,  oblique-eyed,  and  black- 
haired.  They  are  young  Tartars,  learning  to  be 
waiters,  under  the  watchful  eyes  of  their  elder 
brothers. 

All  the  tips  are  pooled  and  the  various  sources  of 
income  go  into  a  common  purse,  and  the  proceeds  are 
periodically  apportioned.  An  artel  is  a  species  of 
workmen's  commune,  by  means  of  which  the  welfare, 
honesty,  and  earnings  of  each  is  the  concern  of  all. 
Some  of  the  artels,  as  the  artel  of  bank  porters  and 
hotel  employees,  among  other  functions  insures  the 
honesty  of  its  members.  If  one  of  its  members  steals 
money  or  property,  the  artel  makes  good  the  loss. 
Notices  in  the  bedrooms  of  the  hotels  advise  guests  to 
deposit  their  valuables,  not  with  the  hotel  clerk,  as 
with  us,  but  with  the  agent  of  the  artel,  who  has  an 
office  and  a  safe  in  the  hotel,  and  is  responsible  for 
any  losses. 

The  grade  of  accommodation,  to  suit  the  length  or 
shortness  of  the  passengers'  purses,  is  admirable.  You 
can  spend  twenty  rubles  on  a  dinner,  or  you  can  carry 


PLANNING  THE  RIDE. 


45 


your  own  provisions,  tea  and  sugar,  and  buy  a  pot  of 
boiling  water,  holding  enough  for  six  glasses  of  tea, 
for  one  kopeck.  A  gourmet's  feast  for  a  moujik  is  a 
glass  of  vodka,  a  big  salted  cucumber,  a  slice  of  smoked 
sturgeon,  rye  bread,  a  glass  of  tea,  with  a  slice  of 
lemon  in  it,  and  a  cigarette. 

At  every  station  is  a  gendarme,  with  long  sword  and 
revolver,  blue  uniform  with  red  trimmings,  lamb's-wool 
hat  with  tall  red  plume — as  gorgeous  an  individual  as 
the  rural  carbineers  one  sees  at  the  stations  in  Italy. 

At  every  station,  also,  are  peasant  girls  selling  beer- 
bottles  of  milk,  and  members  of  the  M  Orthodox,"  in 
rags  and  tatters,  humbly  begging,  "  for  Christ's  sake,"  a 
kopeck.  All  true  Russians  are  Orthodox,  but  the  wan- 
faced  wretch,  with  unkempt  hair  and  bleary  eyes,  who 
wails  for  alms  as  the  train  glides  slowly  into  the  station, 
is  peculiarly  so.  We  toss  him  a  coin,  he  crosses  him- 
self a  half-dozen  times,  calling  down  on  you  the  bless- 
ings of  many  saints,  then  moves  on  to  the  next  win- 
dow. 

"  For  Christ's  sake,  a  kopeck  for  the  Orthodox,"  he 
repeats.  The  scene  wafted  me  to  similar  scenes  in 
other  countries  and  alien  religions.  On  the  great  pil- 
grim roads  of  Persia  the  half-starved  devotee,  footing 
his  weary  way  a  thousand  miles  without  means  to  pay 
his  expenses,  begs  for  alms  in  the  name  of  Mahomet. 

"  I  am  a  good  Moslem  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Meshed," 
says  he;  "  therefore  give  me  alms." 

"  Give  me  alms,"  says  the  Russian  peasant,  "  for  I 
am  a  Christian." 

In  the  north  the  Russian  locomotives  burn  wood,  in 
the  south-  refuse  petroleum.    Pine  forests  cover  about 


46 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


all  the  land  between  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg  that 
has  not  been  cleared  for  cultivation  or  burned  off. 
Tremendous  quantities  of  wood  are  piled  up  at  the 
stations  for  the  railway  company  and  for  shipment  to 
cities.  The  piles  are  built  up  like  cord-wood  and  at 
some  stations  cover  fifty  acres  of  ground.  St.  Peters- 
burg and  Moscow  burn  wood  almost  exclusively,  and 
the  provincial  towns  and  villages  know  no  other  fuel. 
The  quantity  of  pine  wood  consumed  in  the  long,  cold 
Russian  winter  by  two  cities,  the  size  of  Brooklyn,  is 
enormous,  and  the  cutting  and  transportation  of  the 
same  give  occupation  to  a  large  share  of  the  surround- 
ing peasantry. 

At  nearly  every  station  was  seen  the  inevitable 
drunken  moujik,  stupid  and  happy.  One  of  them  at- 
tempted to  pass  through  our  car.  He  stumbled  over  a 
bundle.  "  Nitchevo  !  "  he  said  in  a  maudlin  voice,  as 
he  scrambled  up.  "  Nitchevo  !  "  said  two  or  three 
sympathetic  souls  ;  "  never  mind." 

Nitchevo  is  the  most  frequent  exclamation  one  hears 
in  Russia.  It  means  anything  of  a  negative  degree. 
Nitchevo  ! — never  mind.  Nitchevo  ] — pray  don't  men- 
tion it.  Nitchevo  ! — everything  will  come  all  right, 
Nitchevo ! — the  horse  is  dead,  but  God  will  provide 
another. 

Our  train  plodded  along,  slowly  but  surely,  like  the 
tortoise  in  the  race.  It  took  twenty-three  hours  to 
carry  us  something  over  four  hundred  miles.  We 
grew  impatient  as  the  day  waned  and  mentally  wished 
we  had  taken  the  "  Courier  train,"  which  does  it  in 
twelve.  But  the  noise  of  the  engine,  which  in  other 
countries  seems  to  pant  and  puff  with  exertion,  here 


PLANNING  THE  RIDE. 


47 


bade  us  "  Nitchevo  !  "  and  seemed  to  remind  us  re- 
proachfully that  time  was  made  for  man,  not  man  for 
time. 

Mackenzie  Wallace,  in  his  excellent  work  on  Russia, 
tells  us  that  the  Russian  merchant  has  reached  the 
same  level  of  commercial  morality,  on  the  road  toward 
honest  dealing,  that  is  occupied  in  England  by  the 
horse  dealer.  It  may  be  that  the  English  horse  dealer 
is  grossly  libeled  by  the  comparison  ;  but,  however 
that  may  be,  there  can  be  no  two  opinions  about  the 
character  of  the  gentlemen  who  gain  their  livelihood 
by  buying,  selling,  and  swapping  horses  in  Russia.  A 
man  may  be  a  knave  in  any  country  without  being  a 
horse  dealer,  but  the  country  has  yet  to  be  discovered 
where  a  man  can  make  a  success  as  a  trader  in  horse- 
flesh without  an  occasional  breach  of  faith  with  his 
conscience.  Certainly,  an  inquirer  after  an  honest 
horse  dealer  for  a  museum  of  ethnographical  curiosi- 
ties would  not  turn  to  Russia.  Least  of  all  would  he 
go  to  Moscow. 

Moscow  is  the  commercial  Mecca  of  the  empire,  as 
well  as  the  Mecca  of  its  imperial  and,  next  to  Kiev, 
its  religious  traditions.  The  merchants  of  Moscow  are 
understood  to  be  the  shrewdest  and  the  wealthiest  in 
Russia;  and  the  "  Moskovsky  "  horse  dealer  has  at- 
tained such  a  tremendous  height  in  the  scale  of  roguery, 
that  he  is  regarded  by  provincial  members  of  the  fra- 
ternity with  a  degree  of  admiration  amounting  to  awe. 

When,  therefore,  the  author  turned  his  footsteps, 
one  fine  day  in  June,  1890,  in  the  direction  of  a  large 
open  space  in  the  ancient  capital  of  the  Czars,  where 
these  crafty  gentlemen  exhibit,  for  the  benefit  of  pos- 


48  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


sible  customers,  the  accumulated  results  of  life-long 
and  hereditary  trickery  in  selling  spavined  and  broken- 
winded  horses  to  credulous  humans,  with  a  view  to 
buying  a  horse,  a  sensation  as  of  venturing  on  exceed- 
ingly slippery  ground  may  well  be  excused. 

A  slight  knowledge  of  horse-flesh  would  be  sufficient 
to  prevent  me  being  taken  in  much  on  the  score  of  age, 
or  other  "  points  "  visible  to  the  eye  ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  stranger,  knowing  nothing  of  the  language, 
nothing  of  the  idiosyncrasies  of  Russian  horse  dealing, 
and  very  little  about  the  prices  of  horses  in  Moscow, 
would  be  sure  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  veritable  wind- 
fall by  every  dealer  who  had  on  hand  a  "  touched  up  " 
animal. 

For  the  purpose  of  seeing  Russia  and  the  Russians 
to  better  advantage  than  from  viewing  them  from  the 
windows  of  a  railway  train,  or  on  the  streets  of  the 
cities,  I  had  determined  on  taking  a  horseback  ride  of 
more  than  a  thousand  miles  ;  a  trying  journey  for  a 
horse  in  the  middle  of  summer.  It  was,  therefore,  very 
necessary  that  I  should  secure  a  sound,  strong  animal. 

The  probability  of  my  doing  so,  within  the  few  days 
that  I  intended  to  stay  in  Moscow,  vanished  like  a 
shadow  as  I  reached  the  horse-market  and  approached 
a  group  of  dealers.  The  apparition  of  a  stranger,  and 
apparently  a  foreigner  to  boot,  coming  their  way,  pro- 
duced on  these  worthies  a  truly  magical  effect.  I 
became  the  cynosure  of  a  dozen  pairs  of  the  craftiest- 
looking  eyes  that  ever  attempted  to  look  through  and 
through,  discover  the  inmost  thoughts,  size  up  the 
mental  caliber,  the  horse  knowledge,  and  the  purse  of 
a  likely-looking  victim. 


PLANNING  THE  RIDE. 


49 


The  typical  Russian  horse  dealer  is  a  whiskered  in- 
dividual in  wrinkled  top-boots,  loose  black  trousers, 
a  black  frock  coat,  and  a  black  cap  with  a  patent- 
leather  peak.  He  is  much  given  to  wearing  the  shiny 
peak  of  his  cap  well  down  on  the  bridge  of  his  nose, 
in  order  that  he  may  furtively  examine  the  horse-buy- 
ing section  of  humanity  from  beneath  it.  If  the  sub- 
ject of  his  scrutiny  happens  to  be  a  person  not  given 
to  close  observation,  the  glint  of  the  horse  dealer's 
peering  eyes  will  be  confounded  with  the  glint  of  his 
patent-leather  peak,  and  he  might  easily  be  taken  for  a 
man  engaged  in  the  pious  examination  of  his  own 
conscience. 

After  looking  at  a  dozen  horses,  I  gave  it  up,  and 
returned  home  to  think  up  some  other  plan  of  getting 
what  I  wanted.  Though  I  had  not  bought  a  horse, 
my  ideas  of  the  Russian  horse  dealer  had  undergone  a 
decided  change.  As  arrant  a  knave  as  ever  preyed  on 
the  ignorance  and  credulity  of  others,  his  roguery  is 
yet  of  an  order  so  crude  and  palpable  as  to  seem  ridic- 
ulous in  the  eyes  of  one  who  has  had  dealings  with  the 
same  fraternity  in  America. 

I  approached  the  Moscow  horse-market  in  fear  and 
trembling,  and  came  away  horseless,  but  very  much 
amused. 

There  is  one  method  of  arriving  at  the  price  of  any- 
thing, that  seems  to  be  applicable  all  over  Russia. 
The  seller  asks  twice  as  much  as  he  is  willing  to  take, 
and  the  buyer  offers  half  as  much  as  he  is  willing  to 
give.  Commencing  on  this  basis,  the  vendor  gradu- 
ally comes  down  in  his  prices,  and  the  customer  warily 
advances,  until  a  bargain  is  made.    The  Moscow  horse 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


dealers  not  only  asked  me  five  hundred  rubles  for 
horses  worth  two  hundred,  but  they  seemed  to  think 
the  above  method  to  be  an  equally  fair  way  of  arriving 
at  a  horse's  age.  They  showed  me  a  horse  which  they 
stated  to  be  five  years  old,  but  which  was  in  reality 
fifteen.  I  had  already  obtained  a  hint  as  to  their 
methods,  and  by  yielding  at  the  fifteen  year  end,  in- 
duced them  to  give  way  at  the  five-year  end,  a  year  at 
a  time,  until  they  reluctantly  admitted  that  he  might 
be  nine  years  old. 

The  roguery  of  the  Russian  horse  dealers  consists 
largely  in  brazen  mendacity,  and  in  his  reluctance  to 
deal  with  you  at  all  unless  he  can  swindle  you.  You 
may  know  more  about  the  horse  you  are  trying  to 
buy  from  him  than  he  does,  and  prove  it  to  him  in  a 
dozen  ways,  but  he  will  haggle  and  dicker,  argue  and 
drink  tea  with  you  for  a  week,  rather  than  let  you  take 
him  at  a  reasonable  price.  As  I  had  no  inclination  to 
waste  a  week  on  nothing,  I  looked  elsewhere. 

Dr.  Carver,  the  celebrated  champion  shot,  together 
with  a  troupe  of  cowboys  and  Indians,  called  "  Wild 
America,"  happened  to  be  exhibiting  in  Moscow  at 
the  time.  I  applied  to  them,  and  was  thus  fortunate 
enough  to  obtain  a  horse  that  carried  me  bravely 
through  the  trying  heat  of  a  Russian  summer,  in  six 
weeks,  to  Sevastopol. 

Texas  was  a  Hungarian  mustang,  which  the  manager 
of  "  Wild  America  "  had  bought  in  Budapest,  with  a 
view  to  breaking  him  in  to  the  wild  work  of  the  arena. 
Texas,  however,  turned  out  to  be  afraid  of  the  shooting ; 
afraid  of  the  Indians;  afraid  of  the  cowboys;  afraid 
of  the  band  ;  afraid  of  the  Deadwood  stage  ;  afraid  of 


PLANNING  THE  RIDE. 


5* 


the  wild  steers ;  afraid  of  the  crowd  ;  afraid  of  almost 
everything  under  the  sun.  That  he  was  afraid  of  the 
shooting,  I  knew  before  buying  him.  All  the  other 
evidences  of  his  constitutional  timidity  enumerated, 
gradually  dawned  upon -me  during  the  first  few  days 
on  the  road.  I  never  ceased  to  be  thankful  that  they 
didn't  dawn  upon  me  in  advance,  however,  rather  than 
as  the  result  of  experience,  for  had  they  done  so  he 
would  have  been  passed  over  and  probably  a  much 
worse  animal  secured. 

It  took  me  half  an  hour  to  get  Texas  over  the  first 
tiny  rivulet,  and,  after  crossing  hundreds,  he  flinched 
at  stepping  into  the  well-nigh  dry  bed  of  the  historic 
Alma,  at  the  end  of  our  long  journey.  With  bridges 
it  was  the  same.  Between  Moscow  and  the  battle- 
fields of  the  Crimean  war  are  hundreds  of  bridges, 
small  and  great,  all  of  which  Texas  was  forced  to  cross, 
always  against  his  will,  often  under  the  lash  ;  yet  he 
attempted  to  turn  tail  at  the  last  one,  exactly  as  he 
had  done  at  the  first. 

He  shied  at  houses,  people,  cattle,  dogs,  sheep,  hil- 
locks, and  sometimes  at  his  own  shadow.  Left  a 
moment  to  himself,  his  first  idea  was  to  get  rid  of  his 
saddle,  either  by  rolling,  or  by  rubbing  against  tree, 
post,  or  railing.  He  objected  to  being  led,  unless  an- 
other horse  was  ahead  of  him.  When  tired  he  was  a 
stumbler.  Five  times  on  the  journey  he  went  down  all 
of  a  heap  from  stumbling  against  some  scarcely  visible 
stone  or  other  inequality,  and  sent  me  sprawling  over 
his  head.  And  nothing  but  unceasing  vigilance  on 
my  part  prevented  the  recurrence  of  this  undignified, 


52 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


to  say  nothing  of  dangerous,  performance  fifty  times 
instead  of  five. 

Yet,  with  all  this,  Texas  was  a  good  sort  of  a  horse. 
The  only  grudge  born  in  memory  against  him  is  for 
blundering  down  on  a  piece  of  rough  macadam  road, 
and  peeling  his  knees  and  nose,  when  but  two  days 
march  from  Sevastopol,  where  I  intended  offering  him 
to  a  horse  dealer  as  an  exceptionably  fine  animal.  As 
such  he  would,  undoubtedly,  be  passed  on  to  the  next 
customer  by  the  dealer  ;  for  he  was  as  handsome  a 
horse  as  ever  wore  a  shoe.  With  all  his  faults  he  was 
parted  from  with  a  pang  of  regret.  Before  we  reached 
the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  he  would  follow  me  about 
like  a  dog,  so  long  as  one  didn't  lead  the  way  across  a 
bridge,  or  near  anything  that  excited  his  suspicion. 

From  "  Wild  America  "  was  also  obtained  a  good 
cowboy  saddle,  made  at  Houston,  Texas.  It  was  the 
easiest  saddle  the  writer  ever  rode  in.  At  an  early 
stage  on  the  road,  however,  I  decided  that  it  was  too 
heavy  for  the  hot  weather  and  the  long  journey,  and 
exchanged  it  for  a  light  Circassian  seat.  The  Circas- 
sian saddle  consists  of  a  naked  wood  m  ;rame,  and  a 
pillow-like  cushion  of  soft  Russian  leather,  stuffed  with 
goat  hair.  The  light  frame  rests  on  a  thick  pad  on 
the  horse's  back,  and  the  soft  leather  cushion  is 
pinched  tightly  in  the  middle  by  a  surcingle,  that 
passes  round  it  and  under  the  horse,  as  a  third  girth. 
The  natives  ride  with  a  stirrup  so  short  that  the  leg  is 
bent  as  in  kneeling,  and  the  foot  plays  no  part  in  re- 
lieving the  weight  in  the  saddle.  The  position  is  at 
first  extremely  uncomfortable,  and  I  preferred  to 
lengthen  the  stirrups  to  getting  accustomed  to  it. 


PLANNING  THE  RIDE. 


53 


The  merit  of  the  Circassian  saddle  is  its  lightness. 
It  weighed  less  than  half  as  much  as  the  Texan.  The 
cushion  seat,  too,  is  handy  on  a  ride  through  a  country 
where  travelers  are  expected  to  provide  their  own  bed- 
ding, for  it  makes  a  capital  pillow.  Whether  it  makes 
a  better  seat  for  a  long  ride  than  a  hard  saddle  the 
writer  is  not  prepared  to  say,  never  having  given  the 
latter  a  long  trial.  It  is  the  saddle  of  Asia,— the  home 
of  the  horse,  and  the  nursery  of  equestrianism.  Cos- 
sacks, Circassians,  Kirghis,  Persians,  Tartars,  Arabs — 
these  are,  and  have  always  been,  the  finest  horsemen  in 
the  world;  they  all  ride,  with  slight  modifications,  this 
form  of  saddle. 

The  arrival  of  an  American  in  Moscow,  who  intended 
riding  on  horseback  from  that  city  to  the  Crimea,  was 
no  sooner  known  than  a  candidate  presented  himself  as 
a  companion  on  the  journey.  The  ambitious  young 
man  who  made  this  proposition  was  a  student  in  one 
of  the  Moscow  universities,  who  had  just  completed  his 
studies.  As  he  could  speak  very  good  English  I 
readily  agreed  to  the  arrangement.  His  brother  would 
provide  him  with  a  horse  and  I  was  to  bear  all  ex- 
penses of  the  trip. 

Sascha  turned  out  to  be  a  typical  Russian.  As  an 
interpreter  on  the  road,  and  an  explainer  of  the  man- 
ners and  customs  of  his  countrymen,  he  was  invaluable. 
But  it  was  as  an  ever-present  mirror  and  reflection  of 
Russian  character  in  his  own  person  that  he  did  me 
the  greatest  service.  He  was  singularly  warm  and 
impulsive,  and  strangely  unreliable,  contradictory, 
quixotic,  and  inconsistent. 

Never  did  a  young  man  start  on  an  undertaking 


54 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


with  greater  enthusiasm,  or  brighter  visions  of  advan- 
tages to  be  reaped  from  success.  In  the  autumn  he 
was  to  enter  upon  his  military  duties  by  joining  a  regi- 
ment of  cavalry.  The  ride  would  win  him  fame  and 
prestige  among  his  comrades,  and  bring  him  to  the  no- 
tice of  his  superior  officers.  He  would  gain  a  knowledge 
of  his  country,  and,  by  having  some  one  to  talk  to  in 
that  language,  improve  his  English.  He  would  keep  a 
diary,  and  upon  his  return  write  a  book.  In  the  eyes 
of  his  relatives  and  his  fiancee,  the  daughter  of  a  mer- 
chant of  Tula,  he  would  be  a  "hero. 

The  keeping  of  a  diary  proved  too  irksome  at  the  end 
of  three  days,  so  he  gave  it  up  and  decided  that  it 
would  be  easier  and  better  to  wait  until  I  had  pub- 
lished a  book  in  America,  when  he  would  translate  it 
into  Russian.  A  week's  journey  on  our  road  we  called 
on  his  fiancee.  The  young  lady  was  delighted 
with  him,  for  what  he  was  doing  was,  in  her  eyes, 
an  heroic  performance.  She  presented  him  with  a 
bouquet,  and  stuck  rose-buds  in  his  hat-band  when  we 
rode  away.  Scarcely  had  the  roses  faded,  and  the  vis- 
ion of  his  sweetheart's  approving  smiles  grown  dim, 
than  he  began  to  dwell  on  the  contrast  between  the 
fatigue  and  discomforts  of  the  road  and  the  ease  and 
pleasure  of  life  in  Moscow.  And  he  eventually  threw 
up  the  sponge  and  returned,  when  but  twelve  days' 
ride  from  the  end  of  our  journey. 

In  intellect,  he  was  as  bright  as  he  was  incapable  of 
logical  reasoning.  He  knew  four  languages  and  could 
quote  Shakespeare  by  the  page  ;  but  could  never  be 
brought  to  understand  why  the  Czar  couldn't  make 
Russia  as  rich  as  he  chose,  by  simply  ordering  the 


PLANNING  THE  RIDE. 


55 


mint  to  manufacture  mountains  of  paper  rubles.  In 
money  matters  he  was  an  understudy  of  the  old  race 
of  Russian  nobles,  who  used  to  tuin  their  serfs  and 
estates  at  home  in  order  that  they  might  squander* 
thousands  of  pounds  ostentatiously  on  the  green  cloth 
tables  at  Monaco,  and  fling  handfuls  of  Napoleons  at 
waiters'  heads  in  Paris.  From  all  this,  it  will  be  seen 
that  though  fortunate  in  my  horse,  I  was  a  great  deal 
more  fortunate  in  my  companion. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE  START  FROM  MOSCOW. 

IT  was  a  warm,  moist  morning  in  the  middle  of  June, 
when  Sascha,  the  young  student  of  Moscow,  and 
the  writer  rode  out  of  Moscow.  The  eminently  re- 
spectable section  of  old  Moscow's  conservative  citi- 
zens, the  representatives  of  her  wealth  and  beauty  as 
well  as  of  her  mercantile  pre-eminence,  were  still  asleep. 
At  the  doors  of  the  big  mansions,  and  the  fashionable 
apartment-houses,  the  dvorniks,  curled  up  in  their  huge 
overcoats,  were  imitating  the  admirable  example  of  the 
inmates. 

A  few  of  these  watchmen,  who  had  proved  their  fit- 
ness for  their  position  by  sleeping,  through  the  night, 
the  untroubled  sleep  of  the  righteous,  craned  their 
necks  above  the  all-enveloping  sheepskins,  at  the 
sound  of  our  horses'  feet,  as  a  setting  hen  peers  over 
the  edge  of  her  nest  when  apprehensive  of  intruders. 
And  having  satisfied  their  curiosity  by  a  sleepy  scru- 
tiny of  my  American  cow-boy  saddle,  drew  their  heads 
down  again,  once  more  in  unreflective  imitation  of  the 
hen. 

We  rode  along  a  narrow  street  in  the  old  Moscovite 
quarter,  where  the  houses  were  painted  in  many  bright 
colors  and  ornamented  with  woodwork,  curiously 
carved.    Balconies,  where,  a  few  hours  earlier,  the 

56 


THE  START  FROM  MOSCOW. 


57 


young  bloods  of  Moscow,  military  officers,  and  visiting 
merchants  from  country  towns,  drank  champagne, 
listened  to  the  balalaika  and  the  accordion,  believing, 
in  the  intoxication  of  the  hour,  the  place,  and  the 
occasion,  that  they  were  having  a  capital  time,  were 
now  closely  curtained. 

In  deference  to  the  ignorance  that  still  prevails  in 
Russia,  the  shopkeepers  of  the  cities  are  obliged  to 
decorate  their  signs  with  pictures  of  what  they  have  to 
sell,  in  addition  to  setting  forth  the  nature  of  their 
business  in  words.  The  narrow  street  we  were  now 
traversing,  being  a  part  of  the  older  section  of  the 
town,  was  curiously  realistic  in  this  matter.  Painters 
and  sculptors  had  lent  their  art,  that  there  might  be 
no  mistakes  by  rich  country  merchants  unable  to  read, 
and  the  curtained  balconies  were  supported  by  statuary 
never  intended  to  represent  the  saints.  To  this  part 
of  old  Moscow,  though  it  was  six  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, night  had  only  just  begun. 

We  came  to  a  quarter  where  there  seemed  to  be 
nothing  but  boulevards,  with  avenues  of  young  trees, 
big  barracks,  and  equally  big  and  gloomy-looking  in- 
stitutions of  learning.  Under  the  windows  of  the  big 
commercial  college,  where  my  companion  had  lately 
graduated  in  the  theoretical  part  of  a  profession  that 
would  enable  him  to  hold  his  own  against  his  mercan- 
tile countrymen,  we  halted  a  moment.  Sascha  was  in 
high  glee.  Here  also,  he  informed  me,  was  learned 
the  language  that  had  been  instrumental  in  bringing 
him  my  acquaintance,  and  had  recommended  him  as  a 
companion  for  the  ride  on  which  we  were  now  starting. 

His  old  tutors,  as  well  as  his  comrades,  came  in  for 


58 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


a  share  of  his  attentions.  Though  absent  in  the  flesh, 
Sascha  declared  he  could  still  see  them  through  the 
gray  stone  walls,  and,  stretching  out  his  hand  toward 
his  old  dormitory,  he  apostrophized  the  tutors  in  a 
most  theatrical  manner,  declaring  his  keen  satisfaction 
at  the  mighty  change  in  his  fortunes,  that  had  trans- 
ferred him  from  the  world  of  stools  and  studies,  to  the 
saddle  and  the  freedom  of  a  horse's  back. 

Beyond  the  universities,  we  plunged  into  plebeian 
Moscow,  the  world  of  red-shirted  workmen  and  cheap 
frocked  women  ;  low  vodka  shops  and  bare,  roomy 
traktirs,  where  the  red-shirted  workmen  assemble  each 
evening  to  gossip  and  swallow  astonishing  quantities 
of  tea,  inferior  in  quality  and  very,  very  weak. 

Here  was  Moscow's  social  and  material  contrast  to 
the  big  houses,  with  the  sleeping  dvorniks,  and  of  the 
silent  street  of  painted  house  fronts,  curtained  bal- 
conies and  all  the  rest.  Though  day  had  not  yet 
dawned  for  other  sections  of  Moscow,  it  had  long  since 
dawned  for  the  inhabitants  of  this.  Employers  of 
labor  in  Moscow  know  nothing  of  the  vexed  questions 
as  to  eight-hour  laws,  ten-hour  laws,  or  even  laws  of 
twelve.  Thousands  of  red  shirts,  issuing  from  the 
crowded  hovels  of  this  quarter,  like  rats  from  their 
hiding  places,  had  scattered  over  the  city  long  before 
our  arrival  on  the  scene  ;  other  thousands  were  still 
issuing  forth,  and  streaming  along  the  badly  cobbled 
streets.  Under  their  arms,  or  in  tin  pails,  were  loaves 
of  black  rye  bread,  their  food  for  the  day,  which  would 
be  supplemented  at  meal  times  by  a  salted  cucumber, 
or  a  slice  of  melon,  from  the  nearest  grocery. 

For  five  versts,  according  to  Sascha,  who,  Russian- 


THE  START  FROM  MOSCOW. 


59 


like,  had  no  idea,  however,  of  the  population  and  size 
of  the  city,  though  he  had  been  born  and  educated  in 
it,  we  rode  over  Moscow's  execrable  pavements,  then 
emerged  on  to  a  macadam  road.  Workmen  from  the 
quarter  we  had  just  passed  through  had  preceded  us  in 
this  direction  hours  before,  and  were  now  met  in  the 
character  of  teamsters,  bringing  in  petroleum  from  the 
big  iron  tanks  that  loomed  up  in  the  distance  ahead. 

Though  Moscow  can  boast  of  its  electric  light  as 
well  as  of  gas,  it  is  yet  a  city  of  petroleum.  Coal  is 
dear,  and,  in  the  matter  of  electric  lights  and  similar 
innovations  from  the  wide-awake  Western  world, 
Moscow  is,  as  ever,  doggedly  conservative.  So  repug- 
nant, indeed,  to  this  stronghold  of  ancient  and  honor- 
able Muscovite  sluggishness,  is  the  necessity  of  keeping 
abreast  with  the  spirit  of  modern  improvement,  that 
the  houses  are  not  yet  even  numbered.  There  are  no 
numbers  to  the  houses  in  Moscow  ;  only  the  streets 
are  officially  known  by  name.  To  find  anybody's 
address,  you  must  repair*  to  the  street,  and  inquire  of 
the  policeman  or  drosky  driver,  who  are  the  most 
likely  persons  to  know,  for  the  house  belonging  to  Mr. 
So-and-so,  or  in  which  that  gentleman  lives.  It  seems 
odd  that  in  a  country  where  the  authorities  deem  it 
necessary  to  know  where  to  put  their  hand  on  any 
person  at  a  moment's  notice,  the  second  city  of  the 
empire  should  be,  in  1890,  without  numbers  to  its 
houses. 

The  macadam  road,  though  just  without  the  city, 
and  thronged  with  produce  and  petroleum  wagons, 
was  but  a  slight  improvement  on  the  cobbled  streets. 
We  were  glad  when  we  eventually  found  ourselves 


6o  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


fairly  in  the  country.  Our  way  led  through  the  estates 
of  Prince  Galitzin,  a  wealthy  land  owner  in  this  part  of 
Russia.  Villages  dotted  the  level  landscape  thickly, 
their  positions  being  indicated  by  big  churches  painted 
white,  with  green  spires  and  domes.  Russia  is  a 
hedgeless  country,  and  fences  are  confined  to  gardens 
and  house  grounds,  or  to  special  bits  near  the  country 
mansions  of  wealthy  landlords,  such  as  Prince  Galitzin. 

This  nobleman's  country  residence  was  a  fine,  large 
mansion,  on  the  edge  of  a  lake,  several  hundred  acres 
in  extent,  which  had  been  artificially  created  in  the 
good  old  day  of  serfdom,  princely  squanderings  in 
Paris,  and  a  steady  diet  of  champagne  and  sterlet  at 
home.  The  serfs  are  "  freed  "  ;  we  hear  nothing  nowa- 
days of  Russian  spendthrifts  in  Paris,  and  the  land 
owners  who  can  afford  to  entertain  largely  on  the 
above  named  costly  articles  of  consumption,  have 
dwindled  to  a  very  small  company  indeed. 

Who  has  profited  by  the  mighty  change?  Popular 
supposition  opens  wide  its  eyes,  in  astonishment  at 
the  ignorance  implied  in  such  a  question,  and  conde- 
scendingly replies,  "  The  peasants,  of  course.  Were 
they  not  formerly  serfs,  and  are  now  free  from  the 
hardships  of  having  to  work  without  pay?  " 

The  peasants — we  rode  through  their  villages  ;  and, 
bearing  in  mind  this  popular  conception,  one  could 
but  marvel  at  their  condition,  and  wonder  if,  like  so 
many  other  changes  brought  about  under  the  direc- 
tions of  a  too  paternal  government,  their  improvement 
was  not  theoretic  rather  than  material. 

But  it  is  early  on  the  journey  to  begin  moralizing 
on  the  condition  of  the  people  whose  acquaintance 


THE  START  FROM  MOSCOW. 


6 1 


we  were  only  beginning  to  make,  and  whose  appear- 
ance and  manner  of  life  were,  as  yet,  matters  of 
curiosity. 

The  forests  through  which  our  road  led  were  in 
their  happiest  midsummer  mood  as  to  vegetation,  and 
the  day  being  sultry,  threatening  thunder-storms,  their 
savagest  as  to  flies.  My  companion's  horse,  who  was 
a  tough  old  charger,  obtained  from  a  Cossack  officer, 
held  his  own  stolidly  among  the  myriads  of  hungry  flies, 
of  many  sizes  and  varieties,  that  assailed  us  in  the 
patches  of  primeval  forest. 

But  I  early  learned  that,  among  his  other  eccentrici- 
ties of  character,  Texas  considered  the  attack  of  even 
a  single  fly  so  gross  an  insult,  as  to  justify  a  combined 
assault  on  the  offender  with  mouth,  feet,  and  tail.  In 
other  words,  Texas  was  remarkably  tender-skinned,  and 
sensitive  to  a  degree  in  the  particular  matter  of  flies  and 
mosquitoes.  At  this  early  stage  of  the  journey,  also, 
he  promptly  asserted  the  authority  of  a  horse  to  have 
the  first  voice  in  the  matter  of  his  own  comfort  by 
rolling  with  the  saddle,  when  we  halted  for  refresh- 
ments at  a  village.  He  was  a  persistent  advocate  of 
horses'  rights  ;  and  all  the  way  to  the  Crimea  never 
neglected  to  remind  his  rider  that  horses  as  well  as 
women's  rights  women,  had  abstract  rights  that  men 
were  bound  to  respect,  regardless  of  their  own  judg- 
ment in  the  matter. 

The  villages  about  Moscow  echo  something  of  the 
venerable  atmosphere  of  legendary  lore  that  hangs 
about  the  ancient  capital  itself.  Sascha  pointed  out 
one  village  church  where,  at  the  approach  of  a  proces- 
sion of  priests  carrying  a  miracle-working  ikon,  the 


62  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


big  iron  bell  had  suddenly  disappeared  from  the  bel- 
fry. Nobody  saw  where  it  vanished  to,  but  it  was 
supposed  to  have  flown  into  a  near-by  lake;  for  on  cer- 
tain nights  a  sound,  as  of  a  bell  ringing,  may  be  heard 
issuing  from  the  depths. 

The  flowers,  the  ferns,  the  grasses  that  carpeted  the 
forest,  all  served  to  conjure  up  in  my  companion's 
mind  scraps  of  peasant-lore,  so  keen  and  enthusiastic 
was  his  enjoyment  of  these,  our  first  few  hours  in  the 
saddle. 

Rye  and  potatoes  were  the  crops  that  lined  the  road, 
in  the  big  open  fields,  which  were  clearings  in  the  vast 
forest  that  covers  the  whole  of  northern  Russia.  For- 
est lands  play  a  conspicuous  and  important  part  in  the 
economic  affairs  of  the  Russian  country  and  people. 
Russia  is  primarily  a  country  of  "land  and  timber." 
The  wealthiest  Russians  are  those  who  own  the  broad- 
est tracts  of  the  one,  and  the  most  valuable  and  acces- 
sible patches  of  the  other.  The  most  desirable  pos- 
session in  Russia,  setting  aside  choice  mining  or  city 
property,  is  a  tract  of  heavy  pine  forest,  accessible  to 
one  of  the  large  cities  by  rail  or  river.  Facility  of 
transportation,  however,  is  everything.  A  tree  five 
hundred  miles  inland  from  where  a  purchaser  could  be 
found  for  it,  becomes  a  mere  encumbrance  to  the 
ground,  and  an  obstacle  to  cultivation  ;  whereas,  in 
the  part  of  Russia  traversed  by  our  first  week's  ride, 
it  is  one  of  the  chief  sources  of  wealth. 

In  remote  districts  the  peasants  clear  the  ground  by 
burning  up  all  but  the  choicest  sticks  of  timber  in  a 
patch  of  forest,  and,  by  the  aid  of  the  ashes,  produce 
crops  on  soil  that  would  otherwise  be  too  poor  for  cul- 


THE  START  FROM  MOSCOW. 


63 


tivation.  But  on  this  first  day's  ride,  and  after,  we 
passed  many  tracts  of  pine  forest  that  had  been  set 
out,  and  carefully  preserved  from  harm.  Fir  trees 
seem  to  grow  best  on  barren  soil,  that  would  grow 
nothing  else.  It  is  customary  for  Russian  landowners, 
with  an  eye  to  the  future,  to  plant  tracts  of  forest,  for 
the  benefit  of  their  posterity.  Many  of  these  artificial 
tracts  are  beautiful  to  the  eye,  the  young  trees  stand- 
ing in  straight,  long  rows,  whichever  way  you  look 
through  the  forest,  like  fields  of  maize  in  the  West. 
These  tracts  of  forest  are  often  given  by  Russian  land 
owners  as  dowry  with  a  daughter..  An  heiress,  in 
Russia,  often  means  a  young  lady  whose  father  will  fit 
her  out  with  a  blooming  trousseau  and  a  "  tract  of 
forest."  Sascha  spoke  to  me  of  Russian  heiresses  with 
"dowries  of  300,000  rubles  in  forest." 

The  important  part  played  by  these  forests,  in 
Russia,  is  continually  thrust  upon  the  notice  of  the 
traveler,  whose  business  is  to  take  cognizance  of  his  sur- 
roundings. It  is  the  fuel  of  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow 
and  all  the  villages,  towns,  and  cities  of  the  northern 
half  of  the  country.  All  summer  long  the  canals  of  St. 
Petersburg  are  filled  with  monster  barges,  containing 
as  much  as  four  hundred  tons  apiece  of  neatly  cut  fire- 
wood. They  are  moored  in  the  Neva  ;  they  crawl  along 
the  canals  and  smaller  streams,  and  are  towed  in  long 
strings  by  stout  tugs  across  the  Gulf  of  Finland,  Lakes 
Ladoga  and  Onega,  and  the  smaller  lakes  of  the 
adjacent  provinces,  all  streaming  toward  the  great 
northern  capital.  For  eight  months  of  the  year,  six  of 
which  are  very  cold,  St.  Petersburg  has  to  be  heated,  and 
the  fuel  is  wood.    With  Moscow  it  is  the  same,  only 


64 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


the  supply  has  to  reach  the  old  capital  by  rail  and 
road. 

The  Russian  peasants  of  these  great  northern  forest 
regions  are  the  most  skillful  axmen  in  the  world, 
begging  the  pardon  of  the  lumbermen  of  Maine  and 
Minnesota  ;  and  the  forest  is  their  good  foster-mother, 
without  whom  they  would  have  a  sorry  enough  time 
of  it,  dodging  the  tax-collector's  knout.  The  land  is 
poor,  and  the  amount  allotted  to  them  by  the  govern- 
ment when  they  were  emancipated  is  often  insufficient 
for  their  bare  support,  saying  nothing  of  taxes.  Since 
there  is  no  escaping  the  latter,  great  numbers  of  these 
northern  moujiks  literally  "  take  to  the  woods  "  for  the 
greater  part  of  the  year. 

All  winter  the  ring  of  ax,  and  the  buzzing  music  of 
the  sawmills  resound  through  the  forests  ;  and  men  and 
teams  transport  fire-wood,  railway  ties,  telegraph  poles, 
lumber,  and  blocks  for  paving  city  streets,  to  the  rail- 
ways and  river  banks.  With  the  thawing  of  rivers 
and  canals  in  spring,  a  great  movement  begins  in 
building  huge  rafts  of  timber,  and  starting  off  big 
barges  of  fire-wood.  The  barges  are  generally  frail 
affairs,  that  are  broken  up  at  the  journey's  end. 

Much  of  the  forest  is  owned  by  the  government, 
even  about  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow.  "  Government 
property"  in  Russia  means  something  very  different 
from  the  American  idea  of  the  same.  No  such  liberty 
is  permitted  as  with  the  unsettled  domains  of  Uncle 
Sam.  Everything  available  on  government  land  is 
expected  to  yield  a  revenue,  as  on  the  property  of 
an  individual.  It  "  belongs  to  the  Czar."  Why 
should  the  Czar  permit  liberties  with  his  patch  of  forest 


THE  START  FROM  MOSCOW. 


65 


on  the  right  hand  side  of  the  road  any  more  than 
Count  Trotoff,  on  the  left  ? 

Whether  you  put  up  at  a  hotel  traktir,  or  with  a 
rnoujik  on  the  Russian  roads,  all  feed  is  supplied  by 
weight  or  measurement.  A  primitive  form  of  beam 
scales,  with  brass  dots  to  accommodate  the  mathemati- 
cal incapacity  of  the  unlettered  moujik,  instead  of  fig- 
ures, is  produced  to  weigh  your  pood  or  half-pood  of 
hay  or  cut  grass,  and  measures  are  filled  with  oats  and 
leveled  off.  Hay  and  oats  are  almost  always  to  be 
procu  red. 

The  accommodation  for  man  is  not  particularly  in- 
viting. The  village  traktir  is  a  little  better  than  a 
Chinese  wayside  inn,  but  not  much.  Doughy  black 
bread,  eggs,  and  tea  are  the  refreshments,  and  in  sum- 
mer your  rights  to  what  you  purchase  are  disputed  by 
myriads  of  persistent  flies.  The  Russian  fly  worries 
you  all  night  as  well  as  all  day.  The  brief  summer  of 
his  activity  commences  late  and  ends  early,  and  he  evi- 
dently believes  his  short  life  should  always  be  a  merry 
one. 

The  windows  of  the  room  to  which  you  are  shown 
are  probably  nailed  up  and  were  never  intended  to  be 
opened.  It  is  no  joke  to  be  thrust  into  an  evil-smelling 
room,  ten  feet  square,  with  a  myriad  of  hungry  flies,  and 
the  air  of  which  has  been  boxed  up  since  winter.  The 
Russians  thrive  on  this  sort  of  thing,  however,  and  one 
soon  ceases  to  regard  an  over-crowded  prison  as  a  pun- 
ishment to  the  lower-class  Russian. 

For  travelers  of  sufficient  importance,  from  a  finan- 
cial point  of  view,  however,  the  landlord  readily  vacates 
his  private  room  and  arranges  a  comfortable  shake- 


66  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


down  with  hay  and  quilts.  The  rooms  of  the  traktirs 
all  contain  from  three  to  thirty  ikons,  and  at  the  hotels  a 
small  ikon  sometimes  hangs  on  the  head  of  the  bed,  to 
insure  sound  and  peaceful  repose  to  the  occupant. 

The  tipping  nuisance  is  worse  in  Russian  hotels 
than  in  any  other  country,  not  excepting  even  Egypt, 
the  land  of  backsheesh.  With  few  exceptions  the 
hotel  employees  receive  no  compensation  for  their 
services  beyond  the  offerings  of  the  guests,  and  all  tips 
are  pooled  and  divided  pro  rata.  Wealthy  and  open- 
handed  Russians,  dining  at  the  big  traktirs  of  St. 
Petersburg  and  Moscow,  usually  reckon  to  give  the 
waiters  one  ruble  for  every  five  spent  on  a  dinner.  At 
the  Hermitage  Traktir,  the  finest  restaurant  in  Mos- 
cow, wealthy  and  ostentatious  merchants  have  been 
known  to  spend  two  hundred  rubles  on  a  dinner  for 
two  persons,  and  to  tip  the  waiter  with  a  couple  of 
twenty-ruble  notes.  At  the  country  hotels  the  em- 
ployees swarm  about  you  like  hungry  rats  as  the  time 
arrives  for  your  departure.  People  whom  you  have 
never  set  eyes  on  before,  now  present  themselves  with 
an  awkward  bow  and  with  a  look  of  eager  expectancy 
that  is  positively  embarrassing. 

Few  things  on  earth  are  more  delusive  than  a 
Russian  country  hotel.  In  the  two  capitals  the  influ- 
ence of  Western  European  contact  has  brought  about 
a  better  state  of  affairs;  but  the  bill  of  a  Russian  pro- 
vincial hostelry  is  a  curiosity.  We  stayed  over  night 
at  the  Hotel  London  in  the  provincial  capital  of  Tula. 
On  calling  for  the  bill  in  the  morning,  I  learned  for  the 
first  time  that  in  engaging  a  room  at  the  leading  hotel 
in  a  Russian  city  you  do  not  thereby  always  engage  a 


THE  START  FROM  MOSCOW. 


67 


bed  to  sleep  in.  The  bedstead  is  reckoned  as  part  of 
the  room,  and  is  always  there  for  you  to  look  at  and 
wonder  why  it  contains  no  bed  beyond  a  naked  mat- 
tress. After  thinking  it  will  be  all  right,  till  you  are 
ready  to  retire,  you  ring  for  the  chambermaid  and 
mildly  chide  her  for  her  forgetfulness. 

Sheets  and  pillows  are  brought  at  your  command, 
and  next  morning,  on  looking  over  the  items  of  your 
bill,  you  perceive  with  astonishment  that  "two  sheets, 
two  pillow-cases,  one  counterpane,"  etc.,  have  been 
added  to  candles,  matches,  and  other  "  extras  "  charged 
up  to  you.  It  is  the  custom  in  Russia  for  the  traveler 
to  carry  with  him  his  own  bed-linen,  pillows,  towels,  etc. 
Only  Russians  who  have  taken  to  the  ways  of  Western 
travelers  ever  think  of  traveling  without  all  these  things. 
All  that  the  hotel  is  expected  to  provide,  and  all  that 
the  hotel-keeper  feels  called  upon  to  include  with  the 
room,  is  bedstead  and  mattress.  The  better-class  Rus- 
sian is  very  much  opposed  to  sleeping  between  sheets 
that  have  been  used  over  and  over  again  by  the  Lord 
knows  who  and  how  many  passing  travelers.  The  fact 
that  they  have  been  washed  before  being  passed  on  to 
him  makes  no  difference.  His  custom  and  the  custom 
of  his  ancestors  has  been  to  carry  his  own  bedclothes 
with  him  on  his  travels,  and  when  some  unforeseen  cir- 
cumstances brings  him  to  a  hotel  without  them,  his 
idea  is  to  borrow  a  set  for  the  night  from  the  proprietor 
and  pay  whatever  is  charged  for  their  use. 

In  the  court-yard  of  the  hotel  or  traktir  are  always 
from  one  to  three  or  four  savage  dogs.  They  are  of  a 
shaggy,  wolfish  breed,  and  seem  but  half  domesticated. 
Usually  they  are  chained  up  with  a  long,  heavy  chain. 


68 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Why  the  chain  is  always  long  the  owners  of  the  dogs 
are  unable  to  explain,  beyond  the  fact  that  chains  and 
custom  are  alike  hereditary  ;  but  the  stranger  who 
unwarily  saunters  into  the  yard  and  manages  to  hop 
beyond  the  danger  circle  by  a  few  spasmodic  jumps,  as 
the  dog  springs  at  him,  not  unfrequently  makes  the 
mistake  of  jumping  too  far.  A  second  wolf-fanged 
brute  rushes  at  him  from  the  other  side,  and,  as  he 
momentarily  speculates  on  the  chance  of  being  torn 
down,  a  third  tries  to  reach  him  from  the  body  of  the 
old  sleigh  toward  which  he  has  begun  retreating.  All 
three  tug  and  struggle  violently  to  break  their  tethers, 
and  to  menace  them  with  stick  or  stone  only  serves  to 
redouble  their  rage.  The  writer  had  a  pair  of  trousers 
converted  into  material  for  the  ragman  by  these  sav- 
age sentinels,  before  we  had  been  on  the  road  a  week, 
but  no  blood  was  spilled.  After  a  couple  of  narrow 
escapes  one  becomes  wary  by  instinct,  and  never  enters 
a  Russian  court-yard  without  due  precaution. 

Away  from  the  railways,  the  traffic  one  sees  on  the 
Russian  highways  is  a  far  better  index  to  the  state  of 
the  country  and  the  condition  of  its  people  and  insti- 
tutions than  the  mere  tourist  ever  comes  in  contact 
with.  Our  route  was  along  the  main  road  between 
Moscow,  Kharkoff,  Kief,  and  other  Southern  cities. 
As  far  as  Kharkoff  and  Kief  it  is  a  very  fair  macadam 
road.  The  vehicles  are  peculiarly  Russian,  and  a  pic- 
turesque feature  are  the  troikas,  with  three,  and 
the  tchetvarkas  with  four  horses  abreast  ;  the  horses 
and  the  duga  (the  bow  that  connects  the  shafts) 
are  hung  with  bells  that  jingle-jangle  merrily  as  the 
teams  sweep  by  at  a  smart  gallop. 


THE  START  FROM  MOSCOW. 


69 


There  is  also  the  linega,  an  affair  like  the  Irish 
jaunting  car.  The  people  sit  back  to  back  between, 
instead  of  over,  the  wheels,  and  the  foot-board-  almost 
touches  the  ground.  A  large  family  or  public  linega 
carries  as  many  as  fourteen  persons. 

A  primitive  drosky  is  also  commonly  met,  a  four- 
wheeled  low  vehicle,  with  driver  and  passengers  be- 
striding a  long  cushioned  plank,  which  connects  the  fore 
and  hind  wheels.  The  telegas,  or  common  country 
wagons,  are  met  in  long  strings,  taking  produce  from 
remote  parts  of  the  country.  Goods  of  certain  kinds 
are  still  hauled  into  Moscow  several  hundred  miles  by 
the  lumbering  telegas  from  districts  that  are  far  from  a 
railway. 

The  Moscow-Kharkoff  highway  is  a  well-kept  mac- 
adam with  a  reservation  of  greensward,  forty  feet  wide 
on  either  side.  On  some  of  the  communes  through 
which  the  road  passes  the  side  reservations  are  rented 
from  the  government  and  preserved  for  hay  ;  on  others 
are  herds  of  hobbled  horses,  tended  by  men  and  boys, 
with  dogs,  and  whips  that  are  one  of  the  curiosities  of 
the  road.  These  enormous  lashes  are  twice  as  large  as 
the  largest  bull-whacking  whips  of  the  old  overland 
days  in  the  West. 

It  seemed  to  the  writer  rather  picayunish,  in  a  coun- 
try so  prodigal  of  land  as  Russia,  for  the  authorities  to 
"  rent  "  the  grass  on  these  two  narrow  strips  of  side-road. 
Our  horses,  which  we  usually  rode  over  the  sward, 
might  fairly  be  said  to  have  walked  through  clover  the 
whole  distance  from  Moscow  ;  yet  we  could  not  con- 
scientiously permit  them  to  dip  down  and  take  a 
mouthful,  for  where  the  grass  was  fit  for  anything, 


70  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


every  blade  had  been  paid  for  by  villagers,  who 
could  ill  afford  to  giveaway  even  a  bite  of  grass.  The 
Imperial  Russian  Government  considers  it  beneath  its 
dignity  to  sell  its  superfluous  parks'  and  palaces,  but  be- 
fore the  moujik  may  thrust  his  scythe  into  a  bunch  of 
grass  growing  on  the  big  military  road,  which  his  taxes 
and  his  labor  built  and  keep  in  repair,  he  has  to  pur- 
chase the  privilege. 

This  seems  rather  overdoing  the  thing,  in  a  govern- 
ment that  considers  itself,  first  of  all,  "  paternal." 
That  it  fully  deserves  the  name,  however,  in  gen- 
eral, evidences  were  not  wanting  every  hour  of  the 
day,  as  we  rode  along.  On  every  house  in  the  village 
is  painted  a  rude  picture  of  one  or  another  household 
implement.  On  one  is  a  bucket,  a  second  a  spade,  a 
third  an  ax.  These  primitive  hieroglyphics  are  the 
outward  and  visible  signs  of  paternal  forethought  in 
the  matter  of  fires.  Every  peasant  is  obliged  by  law 
to  insure  his  house  to  the  amount  of  seventy-five 
rubles.  This  costs  two  rubles  a  year.  Beyond  this  he 
can  insure  to  any  amount. 

As  a  further  safeguard,  every  village  community  is 
organized  into  a  primitive  fire-brigade,  and  the  pictures 
on  the  houses  indicate  to  the  occupant  what  he  is 
required  to  do  in  case  of  a  fire  breaking  out  in  the 
village.  The  man  on  whose  house  is  pictured  an  ax, 
is  required  to  bring  one  of  those  tools  ;  a  householder 
whose  property  is  decorated  with  the  sign  of  a  bucket 
is  to  hurry  to  the  scene  of  the  conflagration  prepared 
to  carry  water,  etc.  This  is  a  primitive  form  of  fire- 
brigade,  suitable  to  the  little  clusters  of  log  houses 
that  pass  for  villages  in  Russia. 


CHAPTER  V. 


ON  THE  czar's  highway. 

ON  Sunday,  June  29,  we  crossed  the  River  Moskwa, 
where  it  runs  through  the  broad,  fat  lands  of  the 
Nicolai  Oograshinsky  Monastery,  over  a  rickety  pon- 
toon bridge,  half-submerged.  Bridges  have,  in  Russia, 
an  evil  reputation  among  native  travelers.  The 
foreigner  sees  in  them  merely  the  possibility  of  broken 
bones,  but  to  the  native  they  are  also  the  lurking- 
places  of  highway  robbers.  In  troublous  times  and 
lawless  districts,  it  is  under  the  archways  of  the 
bridges  that  marauders  hide,  to  pounce  out  upon  pass- 
ing travelers.  Many  Russian  travelers  make  a  practice 
of  crossing  themselves  at  bridges,  by  way  of  commend- 
ing themselves  to  the  special  protection  of  Providence. 
This,  I  was  told,  is  a  relic  of  the  old  Tartar  days,  when 
the  peasantry  approached  a  bridge  with  fear  and  trem- 
bling, making  signs  of  the  Cross,  lest  it  be  the  hiding- 
place  of  a  band  of  marauding  nomads. 

No  danger  of  robbers  at  the  bridge  across  the  Mos- 
kwa, however,  unless  they  might  also  be  amphibians, 
capable  of  keeping  their  heads  under  water  an  indef- 
inite length  of  time. 

Texas,  as  before  mentioned,  had  a  truly  Russian 
horror  of  bridges.  Among  his  notions  of  a  horse's 
rights,  was  the  privilege  of  turning  tail  at  all  sorts  and 

71 


72 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


conditions  of  bridges,  whether  safe  or  unsafe,  large  or 
small,  wood,  stone,  or  iron.  The  Nicolai  Oograshinsky 
bridge  consisted  of  planks  that  had  once  been  spiked 
to  a  set  of  rafts,  but  which  were  now  mostly  loose. 
By  dint  of  many  cuts  of  the  whip,  and  the  assumption 
of  a  truly  portentous  attitude  by  his  rider,  Texas  suf- 
fered himself  to  be  urged  a  fourth  of  the  way  across, 
though  starting  with  spasmodic  fear  at  every  step. 
Here,  a  viler  spot  than  any  brought  him  to  a  halt ;  and 
when,  prancing  about  under  the  goad  of  additional 
threats  and  coaxings,  water  squashed  up  between  the 
loose  planks  and  smote  him  under  the  belly,  he  gave 
way  to  an  impulse  of  terror,  and,  whirling  round,  bolted 
for  terra  fir  ma. 

Then  ensued  a  comical  battle  between  his  fear  of 
the  bridge  and  his  love  of  society.  The  other  horses 
crossed  and  drew  away  in  the  distance.  Texas 
neighed  at  them  to  come  back,  emphasizing  the  sum- 
mons by  vigorously  pawing  the  ground  ;  and  at  length, 
finding  that  no  attention  was  paid  to  him,  ventured 
across  the  bridge,  and,  demanding  the  rein,  overtook 
them  at  a  gallop. 

The  Moskwa  is  a  sluggish,  meandering  stream,  and 
like  all  Russian  rivers,  save  the  Neva,  several  times 
larger  in  the  spring  and  early  summer  than  from  June 
to  winter.  Wood,  hay,  and  all  manner  of  country  pro- 
duce is  towed  along  it  in  big  barges  to  Moscow.  The 
government  attempts,  in  a  desultory  way,  to  improve 
its  navigation  by  digging  canals  across  its  innumer- 
able horse-shoe  bends,  levying  tolls  on  the  barges 
to  pay  for  the  outlay.  It  is  one  of  the  minor  streams 
of  Russia,  a  tributary  of  the  Oka,  and  is  the  cradle  of 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGH IV AY. 


73 


the  Muscovite  Empire,  and  of  the  traditions  that  cen- 
ter around  Moscow,  which  it  gave  birth  to  and  nour- 
ished into  a  capital  city. 

From  the  bluffs  beyond  the  bridge  could  be  obtained 
a  splendid  view  of  Moscow.  Its  many  golden  spires 
and  domes  glittered  and  twinkled  in  the  sun  like 
yellow  stars,  and  the  scene  was  as  Oriental,  on  the 
whole,  as  anything  the  writer  had  seen  anywhere  in 
Asia.  Even  more  than  the  tall  minarets  of  the  Stam- 
boul  mosques,  or  the  beautiful  temples  of  the  Hindoo 
gods  at  Benares,  the  twinkling  beacons  of  the  golden 
domes  of  Moscow  the  Holy,  impressed  one  as  the 
metropolis  of  a  people's  religion.  Surely,  those 
beacons  indicated  a  harbor  where  all  who  wished 
might  find  comfort  and  repose  of  soul  in  the  calm 
waters  of  the  "  Orthodox  Church."  If  anything  were 
wanting  to  complete  the  Eastern  character  of  the  scene, 
it  was  provided  by  a  band  of  pilgrims,  who  were 
gathered  on  the  bluff,  touching  their  foreheads  to  the 
ground  toward  Moscow,  and  making  the  sign  of  the 
Cross.  These  were  people,  who  had  come  on  foot,  in 
rags  and  begging  their  way,  from  the  distant  confines 
of  the  Empire,  making  a  pilgrimage  to  the  shrines  of 
the  Saints  at  Moscow.  Four  years  before  I  had  seen 
Persian  devotees,  on  the  hills  near  Meshed,  bowing  to 
the  earth  at  their  first  glimpse  of  the  golden  dome  of 
Imam  Riza's  Mosque  ;  vividly  alike  these  two  occasions 
seemed, — the  yellow,  twinkling  domes  and  the  bowing 
rapturous  figures  on  the  hills, — though  one  was  a 
Christian,  the  other  a  Moslem  scene. 

We  rode  through  many  small  villages,  devoted  to  the 
cultivation  of  cherries,  currants,  and  other  small  fruits; 


74  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


and  traversed  for  a  few  versts  the  road  that  Napoleon's 
army  passed  along  after  the  evacuation  of  Moscow- 
Sascha  and  his  brother,  who  rode  with  us  that  day,  joked 
about  Napoleon's  discomfiture,  and  the  devotion  of  the 
moujiks,  who  burned  their  produce  rather  than  sell  it  to 
the  French,  much  as  though  the  whole  affair  were  an 
occurrence  of  yesterday. 

The  talk  was  of  wolves  and  bears,  as  our  road  led  us 
through  tracts  of  wild  forest.  Some  of  the  tracts  are 
several  thousand  dessiatines  in  extent,  and  in  the 
depths  of  these  both  wolves  and  bears  remain  all  sum- 
mer. The  wolves  prey  on  the  smaller  animals  ;  the 
bears  live  on  roots  and  berries.  During  the  summer 
they  are  invisible,  but  in  the  winter  hunger  drives  the 
wolves  to  come  out  and  commit  depredations  on  the 
sheep  and  cattle  of  the  surrounding  villages.  Three  or 
four  pairs  of  wolves,  that  have  managed  to  rear  their 
young  without  molestation  in  the  depths  of  the  forest 
during  the  summer,  muster  a  fair-sized  hunting-pack 
by  the  following  winter. 

Bear-hunting  is  the  most  ambitious  sport  in  Russia. 
Winter  is  the  season  of  bruin's  undoing,  for,  though 
he  hibernates,  the  art  of  discovering  his  lurking-place 
has  been  reduced  to  a  reasonable  certainty  by  a  num- 
ber of  sturdy  peasants,  who  devote  their  winters  to 
finding  bears  and  selling  them  to  the  sportsmen. 

When  the  ground  is  covered  with  several  feet  of 
snow,  the  village  bear-finders  scatter  through  the 
forests.  The  sleeping  place  of  a  bear  is  revealed  by  a 
hole  in  the  snow  made  by  his  breath.  The  finder  of  a 
bear,  taking  sundry  precautions  to  "  prove  his  claim  " 
should  others  come  to  the  same  spot  after  his  depar. 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGHWAY. 


75 


ture,  hastens  to  notify  a  sportsman  of  his  discovery. 
He  offers  to  sell  the  bear,  much  as  if  he  had  it  in  a  sack, 
safely  secured  ;  with  the  understanding,  however,  that 
if  bruin  should  have  sniffed  danger,  and  made  off  before 
he  takes  the  sportsman  to  the  spot,  the  bargain  be- 
comes null  and  void. 

The  usual  price  demanded  for  a  bear  is  a  hundred 
rubles.  He  is  actually  sold  in  his  lair,  and  the  peas- 
ant's services  consist  in  guiding  the  sportsman  to  the 
spot  and  pointing  out  the  breath-hole  in  the  snow. 
Whether  the  sportsman  succeeds  in  bagging  the  bear 
or  not, — that,  of  course,  being  no  fault  of  the  peas- 
ant's,— he  pays  the  price  agreed  upon.  Many  sports- 
men have  a  standing  agreement  with  the  bear-finders 
of  the  surrounding  district,  that  he  is  to  have  the 
option  on  any  finds  they  make.  And  when  a  sports- 
man has  earned  a  reputation  among  the  peasants  as  a 
dead  shot,  they  often  prefer  to  sell  the  bears  to  him  by 
weight,  bargaining  for  so  much  per  pound  instead  of  a 
lump  sum. 

This  is,  in  fact,  the  method  preferred  by  old  bear- 
finders,  who  have  by  long  experience  learned  to  judge 
of  the  bear's  size  by  the  dimensions  of  the  hole  in  the 
snow.  They  shrewdly  take  advantage  of  their  superior 
bear-craft  to  drive  a  sharp  bargain  at  the  expense  of 
the  city  sportsman,  selling  the  bear  for  a  specific  sum 
of  money  if  they  think  the  find  a  small  animal,  and  by 
the  pound  if  the  hole  indicates  a  big  one. 

When  the  writer  was  at  Count  Tolstoi's,  the  famous 
author  showed  me  the  scars  of  an  old  scalp-wound  that 
had  been  inflicted  by  a  bear.  In  his  ante-literary  days 
the  Count  was  very  fond  of  bear-hunting,  and,  on 


76 


THRO  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  M  US  TA  NG. 


the  occasion  to  which  the  scars  bear  reference,  a 
wounded  bear  came  perilously  near  cheating  the  world 
out  of  "War  and  Peace,"  "  My  Religion,"  and  other  of 
the  Count's  productions  that  we  could  ill  afford  to  be 
without.  He  owed  his  life  to  the  presence  of  mind  of 
his  brother,  who  was  hunting  with  him.  Tolstoi  had 
shot  at  bruin  twice,  wounding  him  both  times  without 
disabling  him  ;  and  in  return  the  bear  had  knocked 
him  down  in  the  snow  and  was  standing  over  him,  when 
the  brother  rushed  up  and  put  a  bullet  in  its  brain. 

From  bruin  to  Briton  may,  or  may  not  be  much  of 
a  digression,  depending,  of  course,  on  the  nature  of 
the  Briton  in  the  case.  For  the  sake  of  continuity, 
moreover,  even  more  startling  associations  than  these 
two  may  be  permitted  to  the  chronicler  of  a  journey. 
It  is  well,  however,  when  abrupt  transitions  of  this 
nature  occur,  if  one  is  able  to  disarm  English  suscep- 
tibility by  introducing,  after  treating  of  bears,  a  gentle- 
man as  unlike  one  of  those  animals  as  it  is  possible  for 
a  human  being  to  be. 

We  spent  the  heat  of  the  day  at  the  hospitable 
datscha  of  Mr.  Hamson,  a  cotton  mill-owner  of  Tzaritza. 
Mr.  Hamson  is  a  fair  specimen  of  a  type  of  English- 
men one  occasionally  comes  upon  in  Russia.  He  was 
born  in  the  country,  of  parents  who  had  gone  to 
Russia  and  started  cotton  mills  fifty  years  before. 
Others  went  as  managers  in  Russian  mills,  and  in  the 
course  of  time  became  partners  and  proprietors. 

You  see  unmistakable  English  and  Scotch  faces 
among  officers  of  the  army  and  navy,  and  in  centers 
of  mining,  manufacturing,  and  shipping  industries. 
These  are  the  descendants  of  Englishmen  who  flocked 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGHWAY. 


77 


to  Russia  during  the  reign  of  Peter  the  Great  to  take 
service  under  him,  and  for  various  enterprises  since. 
They  take  pride  in  being  of  Engh  Ii  origin,  though  it 
may  be  but  a  family  tradition  among  them.  You  can 
offer  no  more  acceptable  piece  of  flattery  to  the  lady 
members  of  one  of  these  Anglo-Russian  families  than 
to  compliment  them  with  having  the  English  type 
of  face.  On  one  occasion  I  overlooked  this  delicate 
point,  until  reminded  of  the  negligence  by  one  of  the 
ladies,  who  affected  surprise  that  I  hadn't  mistaken 
her  for  an  Englishwoman,  on  account  of  her  face.  Her 
father's  grandfather  or  great-grandfather  had  come  from 
England  some  time  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

In  St.  Petersburg,  army  officers  with  English  blood  in 
their  veins  affect  dinners  at  the  Hotel  d'Angleterre, 
where  you  may  see  typical  English  faces  under  the 
Russian  military  visors,  or  even  in  the  incongruous 
setting  of  a  Circassian  officer's  costume.  Nearly  every 
day,  when  the  writer  was  at  this  hotel,  a  guardsman 
and  a  Circassian,  both  officers,  used  to  come  to  lunch 
together  at  noon  ;  as  typical  a  pair  of  English  faces  as 
could  be  found  in  all  Britain. 

Many  will  be  astonished,  as  I  was,  to  learn  that  in 
St.  Petersburg,  alone,  are  more  than  ten  thousand 
English,  nearly  all  of  whom  are  British  subjects.  The 
majority  of  them  are  connected  with  the  shipping  and 
manufacturing  interests  in  and  about  Petersburg. 

Englishmen  who  become,  as  it  were,  isolated  in  the 
provinces,  soon  lose  interest  in  the  doings  of  the  outer 
world,  and  surprise  a  passing  countryman,  who  drops 
in  on  them,  by  their  ignorance  of  current  events  be- 
yond the  Russian  border.    In  this  respect,  the  disrepu- 


7$  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


table  press  censorship  tends  to  drag  them  rapidly  down 
to  the  level  of  the  people  among  whom  they  have  cast 
their  lot.  From  the  Russian  newspapers  they  learn 
nothing  but  what  a  suspicious  and  tyrannical  govern- 
ment permits  the  people  to  know,  and  in  order  to  keep 
on  good  terms  with  the  authorities  it  is  advisable  to 
receive  no  foreign  publications  whatever.  It  seemed 
curious  to  meet  intelligent  and  well-educated  English- 
men, like  Mr.  Hamson,  who  had  never  heard  of  what 
the  foreign  press  was  full  of  at  the  time  of  my  visit, 
the  Century  s  exposition  of  the  evils  of  the  exile  sys- 
tem of  Siberia.  And  it  sounded  even  comical  to  hear 
him  ask  if  it  were  true  that  "  at  the  Penjdeh  affair  the 
English  officers  had  run  away !  "  Such,  it  seems,  is 
the  story  as  it  had  been  permitted  to  circulate  in 
Russia ;  where  the  truth  in  regard  to  such  matters  is 
never  allowed  to  be  published. 

On  the  subject  of  cotton-spinning  our  host  was 
more  at  home.  Tariffs  were  high,  he  said,  yet  they 
couldn't  compete  with  English  manufacturers,  owing 
to  the  incompetence  of  Russian  workmen  and  the 
higher  rate  of  interest  on  capital  in  Russia.  In  Russia, 
capital  was  worth  eight  per  cent.,  in  England,  three  ; 
and  a  Lancashire  weaver  was  as  far  ahead  of  a  Russian 
factory  hand  "  as  a  race  horse  was  ahead  of  a  donkey." 
The  Manchester  man,  he  reckoned,  would  do  the  work 
of  six  to  eight  moujiks. 

A  great  future  was  looked  forward  to,  however,  in 
cotton  production  and  spinning.  Everything  possible  is 
being  done  to  promote  the  cotton  growing  industry  of 
Russia's  Central  Asian  possessions.  American  cotton- 
gins  were  being  shipped  to  Samarkand  by  the  dozen, 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGHWAY. 


79 


and  Americans  had  been  employed  by  the  government 
to  proceed  thither  and  instruct  the  people  in  improved 
methods  of  cultivation.  The  dream  of  Russian  states- 
men is  to  see  the  Trans-Caspian  and  Lower  Volga 
regions  develop  into  manufacturing  districts  that  shall 
eventually  supply  all  Russia  with  cotton  goods.  The 
idea  is,  that  when  Russia  is  able  to  manufacture  suffi- 
cient for  her  own  people,  to  keep  foreign  goods  out  of 
the  market  altogether  by  means  of  a  prohibitory  tariff. 
Cheap  clothing,  for  the  welfare  of  the  masses,  is  of 
course,  not  for  a  moment  to  be  considered  in  a  country 
where  the  interests  of  the  people  are  always  made 
subservient  to  that  of  the  state. 

We  spent  Sunday  night  at  a  dirty  traktir  in  Podolsk. 
Wayfarers,  other  than  tramps  and  pilgrims,  were 
mostly  moujik  teamsters,  whose  idea  of  cleanliness  and 
comfort  are  on  a  par  with  those  of  the  American 
Indian.  The  Podolsk  traktir  contained  no  bed  for 
transient  guests  but  the  bare  floor,  which,  however, 
the  proprietor  did  something  to  improve  by  means  of 
an  armful  of  spiky  hay.  Sascha  had  his  Cossack 
bourka,  an  ample  cloak  of  goat-hair,  and  the  writer  had 
an  English  rug.  With  these  spread  over  the  hay,  and 
the  cushions  of  our  Circassian  saddles  for  pillows,  our 
beds  were  at  least  as  good  as  our  supper  of  milk,  black 
bread,  and  tiny  raw  salt  fishes. 

A  dozen  drunken  moujiks,  in  an  adjoining  room, 
added  to  the  sum  of  our  appreciation  by  howling 
bacchanalian  songs  and  arguing  with  each  other 
violently  till  past  midnight.  Drunken  peasants  were 
an  every-day  feature  of  the  road,  as  we  pursued  our 
way  along  the  great  military  cJiaussc'c.    Whether  we 


8o  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


halted  for  refreshments  at  a  traktir,  morning,  noon,  or 
night,  maudlin  moujiks  drinking  vodka,  or  having 
drunk  all  they  could  get,  quarreling  with  the  landlord 
because  he  wouldn't  trust  them  for  yet  more,  were 
sure  to  figure  in  the  by  no  means  attractive  picture 
of  Russian  village  life.  In  other  countries,  where 
drunkenness  prevails  among  the  lower  orders,  it  is  in 
the  evening  when  most  of  the  drinking  is  done,  and  a 
drunken  man  is  rarely  seen  in  the  morning.  Morning 
drunkenness  impressed  me,  early  on  the  ride,  as  being 
one  of  the  national  peculiarities  of  the  Russians, 
though  it  would,  doubtless,  be  more  correct  to  say  that 
it  is  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  uncivilized  boozer, 
that  distinguishes  him  from  his  brother  inebriates  of 
more  civilized,  and  consequently  more  regular  habits. 
The  lot  of  the  Russian  peasant  is  hard  in  many  respects,, 
but  much  of  his  burden  of  woe  comes  from  his  inability 
to  resist  the  doubtful  allurements  of  King  Vodka. 
Without  any  brains  to  spare  from  his  scanty  equip- 
ment for  the  battle  of  life,  his  daily  concern  is  to 
obtain  the  wherewithal  to  pour  down  his  throat  and 
steal  away  what  little  he  has.  Whether  he  is  to  be 
pitied  more  than  blamed  is  a  question  that  is  appli- 
cable to  individuals  rather  than  to  the  moujiks  as  a 
class.  The  hopelessness  of  the  outlook  ahead  of  them, 
and  what  must  seem,  to  the  vast  majority  of  them,  the 
uselessness  of  attempting  to  better  their  condition  in 
life,  is,  no  doubt,  largely  responsible  for  the  moral 
degradation  of  the  Russian  peasantry. 

Indeed,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  go  to  Russia  for 
examples  of  men  "  driven  to  drink  "  for  the  want  of 
opportunities  to  better  their  condition,  though  there 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGHWAY. 


is  a  limpness  and  a  streak  of  recklessness  in  the 
Russian  character  that  makes  for  moral  surrender  in 
the  face  of  difficulties  that  the  Teuton  or  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  would  stand  up  to  and  attempt  to  overcome. 

Undoubtedly  the  lower  strata  of  the  Russian  popu- 
lation are  the  drunkenest  people  under  the  sun.  Look- 
ing back  over  our  road,  as  the  thought  occurs  to  me,  I 
remember  no  village  in  which  drunken  people  were  not 
very  much  in  evidence.  At  every  wayside  traktir 
where  we  stayed  over  night,  the  forepart  of  the  night 
would  be  more  or  less  of  a  pandemonium  from  the 
shouting  and  singing  of  roystering  moujiks  filled  with 
vodka.  I  have  seen  gangs  of  gray-haired  old  men,  see- 
sawing, flinging  their  arms  about,  and  making  fools  of 
themselves  generally,  in  the  sight  of  the  whole  village, 
yet  not  attracting  to  themselves  so  much  as  the  curious 
or  reproachful  gaze  of  a  single  woman. 

On  Sunday  all  the  men  seemed  to  be  drinking  and 
carousing,  and  all  the  women  were  sitting  in  little  cir- 
cles in  front  of  the  houses  gossiping.  The  one  sex 
seemed  to  be  absolutely  oblivious  of  the  proceedings 
or  even  the  presence  of  the  other.  The  drunkenness 
was  sad  enough,  but  the  indifference  of  the  women  to 
it  was  the  saddest  of  all. 

Sometimes,  but  not  often,  were  drunken  women. 
Near  one  village  we  met  a  crowd  of  drunken  men  and 
women,  as  merry  and  picturesque  a  set  of  subjects  as 
Bacchus  himself  could  wish.  Hand  in  hand  they  reeled 
along  and  sang  ;  now  and  then  they  stopped  to  dance 
and  to  express  their  joy  in  wild  laughter.  They  halted 
and  sung  for  us  a  melodious  bacchanalian  song,  well 
worth  listening  to,  as  we  rode  past.    The  men  were  in 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


red  shirts,  black  velvet  trousers,  and  top  boots.  The 
women  were  in  all  the  colors  of  the  rainbow,  with  red 
well  in  the  ascendency.  Arriving  at  a  little  old,  dilapi- 
dated ikon  by  the  wayside,  the  merry-makers,  one  and 
all,  removed  their  caps  and  crossed  themselves  de- 
voutly, then,  proceeding  on  their  way,  struck  up  another 
bacchanalian  refrain. 

Soon  we  reached  the  groggery.  It  was  a  cheap  log 
house,  roofed  with  tin,  and  with  a  little  porch  at  the 
door.  On  the  porch  stood  an  old  moujik  with  a  gal- 
lon demijohn  of  vodka,  from  which  he  was  filling  glasses 
holding  about  a  third  of  a  pint.  He  seemed  to  be 
treating  the  crowd.  One  of  these  portions  costs  fif- 
teen kopecks,  or  about  eight  cents.  The  best  vodka  is 
made  from  rye,  the  worst  from  potatoes.  A  moujik 
can  get  howling  drunk  for  fifteen  cents. 

On  Sundays  and  holy  days  the  vodka  shop  is  the 
rallying  point  of  the  male  population.  His  rags  may 
be  insufficient  to  cover  his  nakedness,  his  house  may  be 
tumbling  about  his  head,  his  family  may  be  upon  the 
verge  of  starvation,  but  the  improvident  moujik  hands 
out  his  last  kopeck  for  vodka,  then  runs  in  debt.  He 
pledges  his  growing  crops,  his  horse,  his  only  cow, 
engages  his  labor  in  advance  at  a  ruinous  discount. 
He  becomes  insolvent,  and  is  unable  to  pay  his  share  of 
the  mir's  taxes. 

But  the  moujik  is  not  the  only  member  of  Russian 
society  who  contributes  to  the  enormous  revenue  de- 
rived from  the  sale  and  consumption  of  vodka. 
Curious  as  it  may  seem  to  American  readers,  the  Rus- 
sian priests  are  notorious  boozers.  A  village  priest 
may  get  drunk  as  often  as  he  pleases,  and  by  so  doing 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGHWAY. 


does  not  forfeit  the  respect  of  his  parishioners.  It  is 
no  uncommon  thing,  so  I  was  told,  for  a  priest  to  drink 
himself  into  a  state  of  beastly  intoxication.  And  the 
"  black  clergy,"  the  monks  who  spin  out  an  indolent 
existence  in  the  five  hundred  monasteries  of  the  Em- 
pire, drink  brandy  out  of  beer  glasses. 

But  do  not  imagine  that  all  Russia  is  shocked  at 
this  consumption  of  spirits  by  its  priesthood — these 
"  carryings  on,"  as  we  should  call  it.  Nothing  of  the 
kind.  The  relations  of  priest  and  people  in  Russia 
are  curious  to  the  Protestant  mind.  The  Russian 
is  devoted  to  the  Church,  and  demands  of  his  priest 
that  he  be  able  to  perform  the  rituals.  Whether 
the  priest  is  of  a  good  moral  character  or  the  reverse 
has  little  weight  with  the  worshipers.  To  them  he  is 
merely  the  automatic  human  machine,  a  necessary  ad- 
junct to  the  Church,  to  swing  the  censer  and  marry 
them,  and  say  masses  for  them  and  bury  them.  He 
seldom  attempts  to  influence  their  moral  character,  and 
they  hold  him  in  no  sort  of  respect.  As  to  vodka,  if 
they  trouble  themselves  about  it  at  all  it  is  to  envy  him 
his  ability  to  purchase  enough  to  get  drunk  on  oftener 
than  they  themselves  can  afford  to. 

That  vodka  drinking  is  at  the  root  of  half  the  misery 
one  sees  in  Russia,  I  was  quickly  persuaded.  The  evil 
is  enormous,  but  the  remedy  is  not  so  easily  found. 
The  revenues  are  correspondingly  enormous,  and  the 
universal  adoption  of  temperance  by  the  peasantry 
would  probably  bankrupt  the  government.  The  reve- 
nues from  vodka  are  said  to  pay  the  expenses  of  both 
army  and  navy. 

A  drunken  moujik    is  a  maudlin,  funny  creature. 


84 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


He  is  recognized  by  all  classes  as  primarily  a  lover  of 
vodka  and  the  music  of  the  accordion.  The  toy 
moujik  in  the  shops  of  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg 
always  represents  a  drunken  man  with  a  bottle  or  an 
accordion.  In  groups,  his  wife  is  trying  to  pick  him 
up  from  the  ground. 

On  Tuesday  night  we  put  up  at  the  house  of  a 
thrifty  moujik  in  the  mir  of  Volosovo.  His  was  an 
ideal  peasant  family  household,  and  Volosovo  came 
near  being  an  ideal  mir.  The  ideal  mir  is  one  of  the 
happiest  arrangements  imaginable  for  the  people  of  the 
mental  attainments  and  social  disposition  of  the  Rus- 
sian moujik.  Unfortunately,  the  real  state  of  affairs 
comes  far  short,  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred, 
of  the  ideal,  even  as  we  found  it  in  Volosovo. 

The  household  I  speak  of  consisted  of  an  ancient 
moujik,  more  than  eighty  years  old, — who  remembered 
Napoleon's  retreat  from  Moscow, — and  three  robust 
sons  with  their  families.  The  house  sheltered  about 
eighteen  persons.  All  three  of  the  sons  could  read 
and  write.  I  had  noticed,  when  riding  through  Volo- 
sovo, that  the  houses  were  neater  and  better,  and  that 
the  whole  appearance  of  the  place  seemed  more  pros- 
perous than  other  villages  we  had  passed  through. 
We  inquired  the  reason.  "  It  is  because  there  is  no 
vodka  shop  in  the  mir,"  was  the  answer. 

We  entered  into  conversation  on  the  subject  of  the 
moujiks  and  their  condition.  Our  hosts  vied  with  each 
other  in  giving  information.  Were  the  moujiks  better 
off  since  the  emancipation  than  before  ? 

"  Some  of  them  are,  and  others  are  not,"  was  the 
reply.     "  Everything  depends  on  the  man  himself. 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGHWAY. 


85 


There  is  no  reason  why  all  should  not  be  much  better 
off.  Vodka  was  the  only  trouble.  A  moujik  who 
kept  away  from  the  vodka  shop  and  tended  to  his  land 
and  his  work  was  infinitely  better  off  than  when  he 
was  a  serf.  For  the  man  who  cared  for  nothing  but 
drink  and  neglected  his  family,  serfage  and  the  mas- 
ter's stick  were  better  than  freedom. 

"  The  secret  of  the  prosperity  of  Volosovo  is  that  we 
voted  to  have  no  vodka  shop  in  the  mir — that,  and 
nothing  else.  Every  mir  has  the  privilege  of  local 
option.  (Since  this  was  written,  local  option  has  been 
taken  away.)  It  remains  with  the  people  themselves 
whether  they  shall  admit  a  vodka  seller  to  their  midst 
or  not.  Vodka  sellers  get  into  the  mirs  by  bribery, 
and  by  paying  a  good  share  of  the  taxes.  A  vodka 
seller  will,  perhaps,  engage  to  pay  five  hundred  rubles 
of  the  mir's  taxes,  which,  let  us  say,  amounts  to  one 
tenth  of  the  whole.  This  being  agreed  to,  the  liquor 
shop  is  opened,  the  moujiks  spend  everything  in  drink, 
and  the  entire  mir  is  demoralized.  The  vodka  seller 
takes  twenty  rubles  out  of  every  moujik's  pocket  ;  in 
return  for  which  he  pays  twenty  kopecks  back  in  the 
guise  of  taxes.  Now,  in  Volosovo  we  decided  to  keep 
our  twenty  rubles  and  pay  our  twenty  kopeck's  taxes 
ourselves,  and  so,  at  the  end  of  the  year,  we  find  our- 
selves nineteen  rubles  and  eighty  kopecks  in  pocket." 

Thus  far,  my  informant  said,  the  government  had 
been  inclined  to  deal  leniently  with  the  moujik.  If 
unable  to  pay  his  direct  taxes,  it  was  because  he  had 
drank  vodka,  and  had  thereby  paid  them,  several  times 
over,  indirectly.  So  reasoned  a  paternal  government 
that  had  delivered  him  from  serfdom — a  weakling  to 


86 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


be  nursed  and  borne  with  patiently.  So  had  it  borne 
with  him  for  twenty-nine  years,  wavering  between  the 
duty  of  teaching  him  the  lesson  of  a  little  self-reliance, 
by  hard  experience,  and  a  reluctance  to  resort  to  ex- 
tremes. Beginning  with  that  year  (1890),  however,  the 
moujik  who  failed  to  pay  his  taxes  was  to  be  flogged. 
From  twenty  to  thirty  stripes  might  be  administered, 
and  a  fine  of  five  kopecks  added  with  every  stroke. 

Every  mile  of  the  way  from  Moscow  the  baleful 
effects  of  vodka  drinking  had  thrust  itself  into  our 
notice,  and  we  asked  our  hosts  why  the  Russian  priests, 
like  the  priests  of  other  countries,  didn't  exert  them- 
selves in  the  cause  of  temperance.  The  mass  of  the 
Russian  population  are  swayed  by  the  sentiments  of 
devotion  to  the  Church  and  its  precepts.  Two  days 
out  of  every  week,  the  whole  of  the  seven  weeks  of 
Lent,  three  weeks  in  June,  from  the  beginning  of 
November  till  Christmas,  or  about  seven  months  out 
of  the  twelve,  the  ignorant  and  reverential  moujik 
starves  his  long-suffering  stomach  at  the  bidding  of  the 
Church.  During  all  that  time  he  denies  himself  even 
eggs  and  milk,  nor  deems  the  condition  of  his  spiritual 
well-being  hard.  But  though  the  Church  would  re- 
buke him  for  swallowing  a  glass  of  milk  in  fast  time,  it 
says  not  a  word  against,  but  rather  encourages,  the 
swallowing  of  an  inordinate  quantity  of  the  fiery  and 
biting  vodka. 

"  Why  this  state  of  affairs  ?  "  we  asked. 

The  devotion  of  the  answer  was  almost  pathetic. 
"  It  is  bad  for  the  people  to  drink  vodka  ;  but  what 
would  the  Czar  do  without  the  taxes  on  its  consump- 
tion?" they  replied. 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGHWAY. 


It  was  bad  for  the  moujiks  to  ruin  themselves, 
but  for  the  sake  of  the  Czar  all  things  must  be  en- 
dured ! 

On  Thursday  we  arrived  at  Tula.  Tula  is  a  city  of 
about  90,000  inhabitants,  two  hundred  versts  south 
of  Moscow.  It  is  the  capital  of  the  province  of  the 
same  name,  and  has  been  famous  since  the  time  of 
Peter  the  Great  for  the  manufacture  of  small  arms. 
Its  chief  reputation,  however,  rests  on  the  manufacture 
of  samovars  and  accordions.  In  every  house  and 
palace,  and  in  every  peasant's  hut  throughout  the  vast 
extent  of  the  Russian  Empire,  is  found  a  brass 
samovar,  or  tea-urn.     These  are  largely  made  at  Tula. 

Like  caviare  and  vodka,  the  samovar  is  peculiarly 
Russian.  So  excellent  a  household  god,  however,  will 
not  always  be  confined  to  one  country  and  people, 
however  large  the  one  or  numerous  the  other.  Its  use 
is  spreading  to  all  tea-drinking  countries.  To  every 
post-station,  and  to  the  house  of  every  well-to-do  Khan 
in  Persia,  the  Russian  samovar  has  already  made  its 
way,  and  not  a  few  of  the  readers  of  these  pages  have 
become  familiar  with  its  appearance. 

But  Tula  and  its  output  of  samovars,  accordions, 
swords,  rifles,  and  revolvers  was  interesting  to  the 
writer  chiefly  as  the  first  stage  of  the  equestrian 
journey  from  Moscow  to  the  Crimea.  After  a  five  day 
ride  we  arrived  here,  men  and  horses  in  good  trim.  I 
had  no  intention  of  riding  against  time,  but  to  jog 
along  twenty-five  to  thirty  miles  a  day,  keeping  well 
within  the  capacity  of  our  horses. 

As  before  stated,  while  the  ride  would  be  interest- 
ing as  a  performance  on  horseback,  the  principal  mo- 


88 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


tive  of  the  journey  was  to  study  the  country  and 
people.  It  was  in  order  to  do  this  to  the  best  advan- 
tage that  I  took  Sascha  Kritsch,  the  young  Moscow 
student,  to  interpret  and  explain  as  we  rode  along 
from  day  to  day.  In  the  writer's  opinion  there  is  no 
better  way  to  study  a  country  than  to  make  a  tour  on 
horseback  or  bicycle,  with  an  educated  and  communi- 
cative youth,  from  among  its  inhabitants,  for  a  com- 
panion. 

Thus  far  our  ride  had  been  chiefly,  like  the  famous 
maneuvers  of  the  Duke  of  York,  up  hill  and  down. 
Had  that  old  martinet  been  in  this  part  of  Russia  with 
his  10,000  men,  he  might  have  "  marched  them  up  the 
hill,  then  down  again,"  all  day  long,  by  simply  follow- 
ing the  military  road  between  Moscow  and  Tula.  The 
country  resembles  the  rolling  prairies  of  southwestern 
Iowa,  but  the  land  is  poor.  Fields  of  rye,  oats,  and 
potatoes  alternate  with  primeval  or  artificial  forests. 
We  saw  not  a  field  of  wheat  between  Moscow  and 
Tula;  the  soil  is  not  rich  enough  to  produce  it  to  ad- 
vantage. The  system  of  agriculture  followed  is  known 
as  the  "  three-field  system,"  by  which  every  field  gets 
three  years'  rest  after  six  of  cultivation. 

We  talked  of  the  celebrated  black  earth  country, 
where  there  would  be  wheat,  wheat,  wheat — nothing 
but  wheat.  The  change  would  not  be  agreeable,  I 
imagined,  except  for  the  interesting  characteristics  of 
the  Little  Russians,  its  inhabitants.  An  ocean  of  wav- 
ing wheat  fields  is  an  interesting  sight  to  gaze  upon, 
but  soon  grows  monotonous.  Here  the  monotonous 
character  of  the  country  was  relieved  by  the  alternate 
lights  and  shadows  of  field  and  forest.    Imagine  a 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGHWAY. 


89 


rolling  country,  half  forest  and  half  fields  of  tall,  ripen- 
ing rye,  from  the  ridges  of  which  are  alw  ays  visible  from 
three  to  a  dozen  little  clusters  of  peasants'  houses,  and 
through  which  the  broad  government  road  cuts  a  wide 
swath,  and  you  have  the  landscape  of  central  Russia,  in 
June,  before  you. 

You  have  seen  it  at  its  best.  What  it  is  like  in 
winter,  when  the  forests  are  bare,  the  fields  a  waste 
of  snow,  and  the  red-shifted  moujiks  asleep  on  their 
stoves,  can  be  readily  imagined.  Even  in  the  holiday 
garb  of  June  there  is  a  tamcness  and  a  sameness  in  the 
beauty  of  the  landscape  that  rob  it  of  half  its  charms. 
One  longs  for  a  valley  or  a  mountain,  and  I  was  con- 
stantly reminded  by  the  observations  of  my  companion, 
that  for  thousands  of  square  versts,  in  any  direction 
from  Moscow,  there  is  the  same  dearth  of  variety. 
A  gully  a  hundred  feet  deep,  or  a  ridge  a  couple  of 
hundred  feet  high,  stirred  the  adventurous  soul  of 
Sascha  into  an  expression  of  wondering  delight.  Nor 
could  he  quite  understand  why  it  w  as  that  I  viewed 
these  trifling  variations  of  the  earth's  surface  without 
emotion. 

The  country  passed  through  sustains  a  population  of 
forty-five  to  the  square  verst.  Villages  were  small,  but 
numerous.  We  rode  through  no  less  than  fifty-seven 
villages,  a  village  for  every  three  and  a  half  versts. 
They  seemed  about  as  thick  off  the  main  road  as  on  it. 
A  village  usually  consists  of  two  rows  of  log  houses, 
straggling  disjointedly  along  either  side  of  the  road. 
Nine  tenths  of  the  houses  are  unpainted  log  cabins, 
thatched  with  straw  ;  the  tenth  would  be  roofed  with 
tin,  and  with  the  house  painted  red  and  the  roof  green, 


9o 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Some  of  my  readers,  though  not  all,  will  be  surprised 
to  learn  that  each  of  these  villages  is  a  tiny  republic, 
and  that  the  real  Russia,  the  Russia  that  I  am  endeav- 
oring to  investigate  and  explain,  consists  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  these  miniature  peasant  republics,  to 
the  members  of  which  St.  Petersburg  is  as  remote  as 
the  heavens,  and  the  Czar  a  demi-god,  as  infallible  as 
Jove.  These  village  communities  are  known  as  mirs 
(meers),  and  their  number  in  all  Russia  is  somewhere 
near  a  half  million. 

A  mir  consists  of  a  cluster  of  peasant  families,  and 
the  land  allotted  by  the  government  for  their  support. 
In  Russia  are  no  separate  farmsteads,  as  the  term  is 
understood  in  America.  Sometimes,  on  the  outskirts 
of  a  village,  in  the  most  picturesque  situation  round 
about,  we  saw  pretty  villas,  as  superior  to  the  dwellings 
of  the  moujiks  as  heaven  is  superior  to  the  earth. 
They  were  not  the  dwellings  of  peasants,  however,  but 
the  "datschas,"  or  country  residences,  of  rich  city 
merchants,  or  the  owners  of  large  estates.  The  moi- 
jik  never  isolates  his  house  after  the  manner  of  the 
United  States  farmer.  The  inhabitants  of  the  mirs  are 
all  clustered  together  in  villages.  Usually  a  dwelling 
consists  of  a  four-square  building,  inclosing  a  court- 
yard. One  side  of  the  square  is  the  house  and  the 
other  three  sheds. 

In  1861,  when  the  serfs  were  emancipated  by  Alex- 
ander II.,  three  and  a  half  dessiatines,  in  certain  dis- 
tricts more  in  others  less  (two  and  a  half  acres  to  a 
dessiatine),  of  land  were  allotted  to  each  liberated 
"soul,"  or  head  of  a  family.  At  the  entrance  to  a 
village  may  be  seen  a  sign-post,  stating  the  number 


ON  THE  CZAR'S  HIGHWAY. 


91 


of  souls  and  the  number  of  houses  in  the  com- 
munity. 

To  the  St.  Petersburg  government  the  mir  is  an  ad- 
ministrative and  financial  unit.  Instead  of  collecting 
taxes  directly  from  the  individual,  the  government 
collects  them  from  the  mir.  The  mir,  not  the  indi- 
vidual, is  assessed  ;  and  if  the  community  contains  one 
or  fifty  " souls,"  incapable  of  meeting  their  obligation, 
the  burden  of  their  delinquency  has  to  be  borne  by 
their  neighbors.  The  taxes  are  collected  by  the  sta- 
rosta,  or  mayor,  of  the  mir,  and  paid  over  by  him  to  an 
agent  of  the  provincial  government. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 

ON  Friday,  July  4,  our  road  from  Tula  led  through 
Yasnia  Polyana,  the  ancestral  estate  of  Count  Leo 
N.  Tolstoi,  the  novelist.  We  had  ridden  out  to  Tula 
that  morning,  and  striking  the  great  Moscow-Kharkoff 
highway,  turned  our  horses'  heads  toward  the  south. 
For  some  distance  our  road  cut  a  swath  through  a 
magnificent  forest.  A  stone  pillar,  surmounted  by  the 
imperial  arms  of  Russia,  told  us  that  it  was  govern- 
ment property.  We  turned  to  the  left,  and  a  short 
distance  from  the  road  we  came  to  a  pair  of  circular 
pillars  at  the  end  of  an  avenue.  It  was  the  entrance 
to  the  Tolstoi'  estate.  Both  pillars  and  avenue  seemed 
sadly  neglected,  to  one  accustomed  to  the  neatness  of 
England  and  America.  The  former  Avere  in  decay,  and 
the  latter  was  overgrown  with  weeds  and  vagabond 
tree  shoots.  We  seemed  to  be  entering  the  domain  of 
fallen  grandeur  rather  than  the  abode  of  Russia's 
greatest  and  best  known  novelist. 

On  the  plastered  wall  of  a  tumble-down  little  lodge, 
near  the  pillars,  was  chalked,  in  Russian,  "Come  to 
the  house."  We  rode  up  the  avenue  to  the  house. 
It  is  a  white  two-story  structure  of  stone  and  wood — a 
roomy,  though  unpretentious  abode.  The  only  striking 
feature  about  it  was  a  very  broad  veranda,  with  rude 
carvings  of  horses  and  birds  on  the  railings.    It  was 

92 


WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 


93 


six  o'clock  in  the  evening,  and  on  the  portico  sat  the 
Countess  and  several  young  ladies.  The  Countess  was 
doing  the  honors  behind  the  samovar,  and  the  party 
were  regaling  themselves  with  tea  and  strawberries. 
The  author  sent  in  his  card.  Our  horses  were  taken 
to  the  stables,  and  in  five  minutes  we  were  of  the 
interesting  party  about  the  samovar.  Beside  the 
Countess  were  the  eldest  daughter,  the  Countess's 
sister,  two  nieces  from  St.  Petersburg,  and  two  or  three 
others. 

"  The  Count  has  been  mowing  hay  this  after- 
noon," said  the  Countess,  "  and  has  not  yet  come  in. 
I  have  sent  him  your  card.  He  will  be  here  in  a 
minute." 

Every  person  at  the  table  could  speak  English,  some 
of  the  young  ladies  so  fluently  that  it  was  difficult  to 
believe  they  had  not  been  born  and  brought  up  in  an 
English-speaking  community. 

Presently  there  appeared  on  the  steps  of  the  portico 
a  thin,  sun-browned  man  of  medium  height,  clad  in  a 
coarse  linen  suit.  His  bushy  eyebrows  thatched  a  pair 
of  kindly  yet  shrewd  blue  eyes,  and  his  gray  beard  and 
long  gray  hair  looked  like  a  peasant's.  A  cheap  home- 
made cap,  of  the  same  material  as  his  suit,  adorned  the 
head  to  which  the  world  is  indebted  for  "  War  and 
Peace,"  "  Anna  Karenina,"  and  other  masterpieces  of 
the  Russian  realistic  school.  Rude  boots,  as  ungainly 
as  the  wooden  shoes  of  Germany,  attested  mutely  to 
the  eminent  novelist's  skill — or  lack  of  it — as  a  cobbler. 
Both  cap  and  boots  were  the  Count's  own  handiwork. 
The  linen  trousers  were  loose  and  the  shirt  looser. 
The   latter  was  worn,  moujik  fashion,  outside  the 


94  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


trousers,  and  was  gathered  about  the  waist  with  a  belt 
of  russet  leather. 

"  I  am  very  happy  to  see  you,"  said  Count  Tolstoi, 
cheerily.  "  I  hope  you  will  stay  some  days.  We  have 
had  American  visitors  occasionally  ;  you  are,  I  see, 
from  New  York." 

"  We  are  riding  from  Moscow  to  the  Crimea,"  I 
said,  "  and,  of  course,  couldn't  think  of  passing  without 
calling  to  pay  our  respects." 

The  Count  looked  thin  and  worn  from  a  recent  ill- 
ness, but  said  he  was  now  in  good  health.  He  was 
taking  a  season  of  "  koumiss  cure."  At  Samara,  on 
the  Volga,  is  an  establishment  for  the  manufacture  of 
koumiss,  to  which  the  invalids  of  Russia  resort.  Count 
Tolstoi  did  not  care  to  spend  the  summer  at  Samara, 
so  he  had  set  up  a  little  koumiss  establishment  of  his 
own. 

"  Come  and  see  it,"  he  said,  "  and  take  my  koumiss. 
I  have  been  mowing  hay.  I  must  now  drink  koumiss. 
I  drink  it  six  times  a  day,  and  take  nothing  else  but  a 
little  soup  or  tea." 

At  the  end  of  another  short  avenue,  we  came  to  a 
round  wattle  hut  with  a  conical  roof.  It  was  a  nomad 
aoul,  or  tent,  of  the  steppes,  improvised  out  of  the  best 
material  at  hand  instead  of  the  felt  matting  of  the 
tribes  in  their  own  homes.  Three  yourg  colts  were 
tethered  to  a  rope  outside,  and  three  big,  fine  brood- 
mares, their  dams,  were  grazing  in  the  orchard. 

A  family  of  Bashkirs  occupied  the  aoul — husband, 
wife,  and  two  small  children.  They  had  been  obtained 
from  the  koumiss  establishments  of  Samara  and  brought 
to  Yasnia  Polyana.    The  three  mares  each  gave  about 


WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 


95 


a  gallon  of  milk  a  day,  the  Count  explained,  and  the 
foals  were  allowed  to  run  with  them  at  night.  They 
were  milked  several  times  a  day,  and  gave  a  pint  at 
each  milking. 

Inside  the  aoul  the  Bashkir  woman  was  plying  a 
dasher  in  a  horse-hide  churn  of  milk.  A  big  jar  of  kou- 
miss stood  on  a  table.  The  Count  poured  some  into  a 
wooden  bowl. 

"  See  how  you  like  it,"  he  said. 

It  tasted  very  much  like  buttermilk,  and  betrayed 
to  the  palate  no  suggestion  of  alcohol. 

"  I  thought  it  had  to  be  fermented,"  I  said. 

"  It  is  fermented,"  returned  the  Count,  "  and  if  a 
man  were  to  drink  enough  of  it  he  would  feel  it  £0  to 
the  head." 

"And  so  you  have  been  mowing  hay.  You  do  not, 
then,  like  Mr.  Gladstone,  confine  yourself  to  one  form 
of  manual  exertion  ?" 

Tolstoi  is  an  admirer  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  but  freely 
criticised  the  motive  of  that  statesman  in  chopping 
down  trees  as  compared  with  his  own  ideas  of  why 
everybody  should  work.  He  had  nothing  to  say 
against  Mr.  Gladstone  felling  trees,  but  thought  it 
would  be  better  were  he  to  ply  his  ax  for  less  selfish 
reasons  than  to  exercise  his  body  and  maintain  his 
health.  Mr.  Gladstone  should  wield  his  ax,  if  he  pre- 
fers to  chop  down  trees  rather  than  to  dig  potatoes 
or  mow  hay,  not  merely  for  the  same  reason  that  an 
athlete  goes  to  the  gymnasium,  but  to  earn  his  living. 

"  Every  man,"  said  the  novelist,  "  ought  to  do 
enough  work  each  day  to  pay  for  the  food  he  eats 
and  the  clothes  he  wears.    Unless  he  does  that  he  is 


96 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


sponging  his  living  off  the  labor  of  other  people,  and 
is  doing  an  injustice  to  his  fellow-men.  Some  days  I 
mow,  others  I  sow  grain,  plow,  dig  in  the  garden, 
pick  berries  or  apples,  or,  like  Mr.  Gladstone,  fell  a 
tree.  I  live  very  simply.  I  make  my  own  boots,  and 
if  my  women  would  let  me,  would  also  make  all  my 
own  clothes.  I  do  not  have  to  work  very  long  hours 
to  pay  for  what  I  consume,  and  so  I  find  plenty  of 
time  to  write  and  study.  I  am  only  sixty-two  years 
old,  and  intend  to  write  a  great  deal.  My  only  con- 
cern is  that  life  may  prove  too  short  to  enable  me  to 
finish  all  I  wish  to  do." 

"  What  particular  literary  work  have  you  in  con- 
templatation  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  have  many  things !  My  future  works  will  be 
on  educational  rather  than  on  purely  social  matters." 

"  Will  you  advocate  a  new  system  of  education,  or 
only  suggest  improvements  in  the  present  methods?" 

"  The  present  system  is  all  wrong,"  replied  the 
Count.  "The  foundation  of  the  system  which  I  shall 
advocate  will  be  the  purity  and  perfection  of  the 
parents.  In  the  shadow  of  paternal  perfection  the 
boys  will  attain  perfection,  and  the  purity  and  good- 
ness of  the  mothers  will  be  transmitted  to  the  girls. 
This  will  be  the  foundation  of  a  better  system  of  rear- 
ing and  educating  children  than  the  world  has  yet  seen. 
The  present  system  is  full  of  evils.  People  have  be- 
come so  used  to  evils  that  they  are  no  longer  capable 
of  distinguishing  the  evil  from  the  good.  Or,  if  they 
recognize  an  evil,  they  have  been  used  to  it  so  long 
that  they  have  lost  the  sense  of  proportion,  and  it 
seems  to  them  less  real  and  grievous  than  it  is.    I  hope 


WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 


97 


to  expose  the  evils  of  the  present  system  and  to  point 
out  the  way  to  a  better  order  of  things  all  round." 

I  asked  the  Count  when  he  expected  to  bring  out 
his  first  work  on  education.  He  could  not  say,  he  re- 
plied. Possibly  it  would  not  appear  during  his  life- 
time. All  would  depend  on  circumstances.  Tolstoi 
thinks  it  would  be  a  good  thing  if  every  author  would 
pigeon-hole  his  manuscripts  and  publish  nothing  during 
his  life. 

"  Then,"  said  he,  "  there  would  be  less  printed  paper 
in  the  world,  and  people  would  find  time  for  reading 
what  was  really  good." 

No  author,  he  argued,  ought  to  receive  any  compen- 
sation for  his  work,  either  in  money  or  fame.  His 
reward  should  be  the  satisfaction  of  having  done,  or 
having  tried  to  do,  something  for  the  improvement  of 
his  fellows.  He  has  never  willingly  seen  any  of  his 
work  go  to  the  publishers,  but  has  always  yielded  to  the 
importunities  and  wishes  of  his  friends.  His"Kreut- 
zer  Sonata,"  he  said,  was  an  unfinished  work,  and  was 
not  intended  by  him  to  be  published  in  its  present 
form.  But  his  friends  took  it,  and  against  his  better 
judgment  it  was  given  to  the  world.  He  was  then 
preparing  the  epilogue  to  it  that  shortly  afterward 
appeared.  He  was  also  writing  a  treatise  on  intem- 
perance, setting  forth  his  ideas  regarding  tobacco, 
alcohol,  opium,  hasheesh,  rich  food,  romantic  love,  and 
various  other  indulgences  that  come  under  the  ban  of 
his  creed. 

We  talked  of  Siberia,  and  of  the  methods  of  the 
Russian  government.  Tolstoi  said,  "  The  government 
is  altogether  bad.    It  is  a  monument  of  superstition  and 


98 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


injustice.  As  for  himself,  he  went  on  in  the  even 
tenor  of  his  way,  doing  whatever  his  conscience 
approved  of,  regardless  of  laws  and  governments. 
They  usually  let  him  alone,  but  collisions  sometimes 
occur.  The  previous  winter  his  eldest  daughter  had 
opened  a  school  for  the  children  on  the  estate.  The 
village  pope  (priest)  sent  a  memorial  to  the  government 
asserting  that  the  instruction  given  in  the  school  was 
not  orthodox.  The  Governor  of  Tula,  Tolstoi's  per- 
sonal friend,  was  obliged  to  come  down  to  Yasnia  Po- 
lyana  and  order  the  school  closed.  The  winter  was 
then  about  over,  and  the  children  had  to  go  to  work  in 
the  fields  anyhow,  so  not  much  harm  was  done.  His 
daughter  intended  to  open  the  school  again,  however, 
the  following  winter,  and  to  reopen  it  as  often  as  the 
authorities  might  close  it  up.  So,  unless  they  tore  it 
down,  stationed  a  policeman  at  the  door,  or  exiled  the 
daughter,  the  school  would  be  carried  on. 

"  The  government  sins  most  against  the  people  in  the 
matter  of  education.  None  of  the  concessions  it  makes 
are  of  any  value.  They  are  only  makeshifts.  Schools 
are  in  every  village,  but  nothing  is  taught  but  '  non- 
sensical catechism  '  and  the  '  three  R's.'  Yet,  with  the 
government  restrictions  dragging  on  the  heels  of  the 
people,  a  great  improvement  had  taken  place  since  the 
emancipation  of  the  serfs.  It  is  now  possible  for  every 
peasant  to  learn  to  read  and  write.  All  the  people 
need,  to  make  themselves  heard,  is  a  free  rein  to  learn 
what  they  choose,"  continued  Tolstoi. 

The  Count  called  to  him  a  bright  little  peasant  girl, 
in  a  blaze  of  red  clothes.  "  Look  here,"  he  said,  "how 
intelligent  these  children  are.    The  moujik  children  are 


WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 


99 


always  brighter  than  ours,  brighter  than  the  children 
of  the  rich  and  noble,  up  to  a  certain  age.  My  daughter 
proved  that  last  winter,  and  it  is  a  fact  well  known  to  all 
of  us.  But  after  ten  or  twelve  years  they  begin  to  get 
dull  and  fall  behind.  It's  the  hard  life  and  the  drudgery 
of  toiling  in  the  fields." 

We  talked  of  Africa  and  its  people,  the  Count  hav- 
ing heard  of  my  adventures  there  the  year  before.  He 
listened  with  intense  interest  as  I  told  him  that  among 
the  uncivilized  Africans,  as  well  as  the  moujiks  of  Rus- 
sia, the  children  were  brighter  than  the  grown  people. 

I  intended  to  send  the  Count  a  copy  of  44  Looking 
Backward  "  that  I  had  in  Moscow.  He  had  already 
read  it.  He  didn't  know  whether  the  government  per- 
mitted it  to  circulate  in  Russia,  but  he  had  received  a 
copy  through  a  friend.  The  story  was  very  well  told, 
he  said,  but  that  was  all  he  could  say  for  it. 

"  To  be  of  value,  the  book  should  have  shown  how 
the  results  which  are  portrayed  were  to  be  arrived  at. 
Without  that  4  Looking  Backward  '  was  nothing  but  a 
fairy  talc.  Then,  men  should  live  a  life  as  happy  and 
perfect  as  that  which  Mr.  Bellamy  describes,  of  their 
own  free  will  and  spontaneous  goodness,  and  not  re- 
quire government  regulation  for  all  their  actions." 

Of  the  governments  of  the  present  day  Tolstoi' thinks 
the  United  States  government  a  long  way  ahead.  It 
is  almost  a  mistake,  he  said,  to  call  it  a  "  government  " 
at  all  in  the  general  acceptation  of  the  term.  Certainly, 
it  was  not  to  be  thought  of  as  a  "  republic  "  in  the 
sense  that  France  is  a  republic.  The  French  govern- 
ment is  a  44  republican  form  of  government  "  :  the  peo- 
ple of  the  United  States    have  a  "  natural  govern- 


ioo 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


ment  "—they  govern  themselves.  A  people  who  are 
simply  living  under  a  "  republican  form  of  government," 
because  they  think  it  better  than  any  other,  may  pos- 
sibly change  their  minds  in  time  of  some  great  public 
excitement  and  think  that  a  king  or  an  emperor  would 
be  better  after  all,  but  no  such  change  is  possible  where 
the  government  is  really  and  truly  a  government  of  the 
people — "  natural  government." 

We  stayed  all  night,  and  the  next  morning  the  Count 
and  the  writer  took  a  long  stroll  about  the  estate.  On 
our  return  three  pilgrims  were  standing  outside  the 
house  waiting  for  alms.  On  the  roads  of  Russia  one 
meets  every  hour  of  the  summer  day  little  bands  of 
ragged,  sunburned  men  or  women,  toiling  wearily  along 
or  sitting  down  resting  by  the  way.  These  are  people 
making  pilgrimages  to  Moscow  or  Kief,  as  good  Mus- 
sulmans make  pilgrimages  to  Mecca  or  Medina. 

The  three  specimens  who  appeared  at  Tolstoi's  were 
uncouth  members  of  the  species  ;  their  faces  were  a 
dirty  yellow,  their  hair  and  beards  were  all  over  their 
faces  and  shoulders,  and  their  garments  were  a  mass  of 
rags  and  dirt.  We  came  up  to  them,  and  the  Count 
stood  looking  at  them  for  a  minute  with  a  smile  of  ad- 
miration. Then,  with  a  sweep  of  the  hand,  such  as  an 
artist  might  make  toward  some  long-worshiped  master- 
piece of  art,  "  I  like  very  much  these  people,"  he 
said. 

He  ordered  a  servant  to  give  each  of  them  a  coin, 
and  then  questioned  them.  One  of  the  men,  he  ex- 
plained, was  very  well  off  and  owned  a  large  farm  near 
Kief.  The  life  the  pilgrims  lead  was  his  ideal  of  a  per- 
fectly happy,  peaceful  existence.    The  only  lamentable 


WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 


101 


thing  about  them  was  their  superstition.  They  were 
not  influenced  by  correct  motives.  They  believed  that 
there  was  virtue  in  visiting  the  ikons  at  Moscow  or 
Kief ;  whereas  the  real  virtue  of  their  condition  was 
that,  in  imitation  of  the  Saviour,  they  were  not  afraid  to 
start  out  on  their  long  pilgrimages  without  so  much  as 
a  single  kopeck  in  their  purses.  This  man,  who  owned 
a  farm,  had  actually  started  out  without  a  piece  of 
money.  The  Count  said  he  could,  with  the  greatest 
pleasure,  sever  all  the  ties  that  bound  him  to  his  pres- 
ent mode  of  life  and  become  a  pilgrim. 

"  It  is  less  of  a  tumble  than  most  people  think,"  he 
continued,  "to  descend  from  wealth  to  the  bottom  of 
the  scale.  In  Switzerland,  a  boy  who  was  running  in 
the  dark,  fell  into  a  hole.  He  clutched  frantically  at 
the  edge  with  his  hands  and  managed  to  hang  on. 
For  a  long  time  he  shouted  for  help,  and  bruised  and 
lacerated  his  hands  struggling  to  keep  from  falling  to 
the  bottom,  which  he  supposed  was  a  terrible  distance 
below.  At  length  a  man  came  and  told  him  to  let  go. 
He  did  as  he  was  bid,  and  to  his  astonishment  found 
that  the  firm,  safe  bottom  of  the  hole  was  but  a  few 
inches  below  his  feet.  It  is  the  same  with  a  rich  man. 
He  struggles  frantically  to  keep  himself  up,  thinking 
the  bottom  means  death  or  worse.  Finally,  he  is  com- 
pelled to  let  go,  and,  like  the  Swiss  boy,  is  agreeably 
surprised  to  find  the  change  a  very  small  one." 

The  Count  told  a  story  of  a  young  man  of  good 
family,  whom  he  had  known  in  the  Cadet  Corps  in 
St.  Petersburg,  who  once  turned  up  at  his  house  as 
a  pilgrim,  as  road-worn  a  specimen  as  any  of  the  three 
before  us.    He  had  been  a  pilgrim  for  a  year.  After 


102 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


staying  with  Tolstoi  awhile,  and  tasting  the  sweets  of 
a  comfortable  life,  he  one  morning  suddenly  disap- 
peared, without  a  kopeck  in  his  pocket,  and  again  be- 
came a  pilgrim. 

In  a  sense,  the  Count  thinks  all  travelers  are  pil- 
grims ;  and  while  the  person  who  travels  for  pleasure  or 
on  business  is  not  to  be  compared  for  righteousness  to 
the  pilgrim  who  sets  out  without  purse  or  scrip,  yet  all 
travelers  are  worthier  than  stay-at-home  people.  Their 
virtues  consist  in  their  contempt  for  a  life  of  ease. 
With  delicate  flattery  he  complimented  the  writer  on 
being  "  almost  a  real  pilgrim." 

It  was  hot,  sultry  weather  at  Yasnia  Polyana,  and 
rain  and  thunder  and  mud  among  the  untrimmed  veg- 
etation about  the  house  made  a  somewhat  gloomy 
framework  for  the  setting  of  Tolstoi  at  home.  There 
were  snatches  of  sunshine,  however,  in  the  morning 
prior  to  our  departure,  when  the  avenues  and  neglected 
grounds  seemed  a  trifle  more  cheerful.  From  the 
Russian  point  of  view,  the  Count's  estate,  probably, 
was  in  very  good  trim. 

We  sat  on  the  portico  talking  until  eleven  o'clock  on 
the  day  of  our  arrival,  and  we  wandered  about  the 
estate  and  chatted  next  morning.  Many  subjects  were 
touched  upon.  The  Count  likes  to  talk  and  to  draw 
out  the  ideas  of  his  visitors  and  compare  them  with 
his  own. 

I  found  him  predisposed  in  favor  of  America,  and 
the  fact  that  I  had  just  come  from  New  York,  and  rep- 
resented an  American  newspaper,  was  an  open  sesame 
to  his  sympathies  and  good  will. 

It  requires  but  a  few  minutes'  social  intercourse 


WITH  COUNT  lOLSlVI. 


with  him  to  discover  that,  like  the  rest  of  us,  he  has 
his  weak  points.  The  Count  does  not  altogether  dis- 
dain notoriety,  though  he  may  not  be  conscious  of  it. 
He  seemed  to  me  to  possess  a  fair  share  of  "  author's 
vanity."  In  spite  of  the  humiliation  Of  the  spirit  and 
suppression  of  human  exaltation,  which  is  the  chief 
foundation  of  his  creed,  Tolstoi  likes  Americans,  be- 
cause of  the  English-speaking  world,  vve  were  the  first 
to  translate,  read,  and  appreciate  his  productions.  The 
taste  for  Russian  literature  was  acquired  in  the  United 
States  before  it  spread  to  England. 

There  have  been  visitors  to  Yasnia  Polyana  who 
have  carried  away  the  uncharitable  conviction  that 
the  peculiarities  of  the  Count's  daily  life  are  theatri- 
cal; that  he  acts  an  eccentric  part.  Sometimes,  during 
our  conversations,  I,  too,  thought  him  knowingly 
affected,  but  eventually  decided  that  all  his  peculiari- 
ties come  from  sincere  convictions  and  honest  eccen- 
tricity of  character. 

At  times,  when  talking,  Tolstoi'  leaves  the  visitor 
momentarily  in  doubt  whether  he  is  not  imposing  on 
your  credulity  and  trying  to  fathom  your  understand- 
ing ;  but  the  final  impression  is  that  he  is  sincere. 
There  is  a  curious  mixture  in  him  of  a  deep  knowledge 
of  the  world  and  the  innocence  and  confidence  of  a 
child.  Nobody  would  try  to  practice  a  deception  on 
him  as  a  man  of  the  world,  because  he  would  feel  in 
advance  that  Tolstoi  would  be  sure  to  see  through  it. 
But  by  appealing  to  the  benevolent  side  of  his  charac- 
ter, it  required  little  penetration  to  see  that  the  appli- 
cant would  have  him  at  a  great  disadvantage. 

The  young  man  who  acted  as  a  butler  at  the  house, 


104  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


and  whom  I  questioned  about  his  master's  habits,  told 
me  that  the  moujiks  often  imposed  on  his  benevolence 
and  shamefully  abused  his  charity.  From  all  the 
country  round  the  peasants  came  to  Tolstoi  with  their 
woes  and  grievances,  much  as  the  freed  negroes  of  the 
South  used  to  appeal  to  the  St.  Clairs  among  the  for- 
mer slave  owners,  after  the  war.  A  short  time  before 
our  visit  a  moujik  come  to  Tolstoi  with  a  very  long  face 
and  asserted  that  his  horse  had  died  and  that  he  was 
unable  to  cultivate  his  land.  The  Count  gave  him  a 
horse  out  of  his  own  stables  to  plow  his  ground  and 
get  in  his  crops.  The  moujik,  who  was  a  worthless 
fellow,  took  the  horse  away,  sold  it,  and  spent  the 
money  on  vodka.  Only  recently,  too,  the  overseer  of 
the  estate  had  caught  a  moujik  in  the  act  of  cutting 
down  and  carting  off  trees  from  the  Count's  forest. 
He  brought  the  thief  to  Tolstoi  and  proposed  to  take 
him  before  the  court.  "  Let  him  go,  poor  fellow,"  said 
the  author  of  '  Christ's  Christianity.'  "  The  trees  are 
as  much  his  as  mine.  I  neither  planted  them  nor  cut 
them  down." 

Neither  the  timber  thief  nor  the  man  who  swindled 
him  out  of  the  horse  was  punished.  The  wonder  is 
that  Yasnia  Polyana  does  not  become  a  nest  of  worth- 
less vagabonds  and  that  the  Tolstoi  estate  is  not 
stripped  as  bare  as  a  desert.  The  latter  possibility  would 
disturb  the  Count's  equanimity  little.  He  would,  in 
fact,  utter  no  word  of  protest  at  the  spoliation  of  his 
property,  and  only  the  stand  taken  by  the  Countess 
and  the  children  prevents  the  family  possessions  from 
melting  entirely  away. 

The  estate  consists  of    iooo  dessiatines,  or  2500 


WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 


acres  of  arable  land  and  forest.  Part  of  it  is  the  old 
family  estate,  given  to  t lie  Count's  grandfather,  General 
Tolstoi,  by  Catherine  II.,  as  a  reward  for  military  ser- 
vices. The  remainder  has  been  acquired  chiefly  from 
the  literary  earnings  of  the  Count.  All  economic 
affairs  he  leaves  entirely  in  the  hands  of  his  wife.  He 
seems  scarcely  a  member  of  his  own  family.  By  re- 
siding in  a  good  house  and  retaining  land  and  property 
more  than  sufficient  for  his  bare  support,  Tolstoi  lives 
in  perpetual  violation  of  his  own  conscience.  This 
state  of  affairs  he  submits  to  for  the  sake  of  his  family, 
who  are  only  partially  in  sympathy  with  his  creed. 

He  believes  not  only  that  he  has  no  right  to  the 
estate,  but  that  it  would  be  an  act  of  pride  and  pre- 
sumption to  take  upon  himself  even  the  right  to  divide 
it  up  and  give  it  away.  "  How  can  one  have  the  pre- 
sumption to  give  away  what  doesn't  belong  to  him?" 

In  the  matter  of  land-ownership,  Tolstoi  declared  him- 
self a  great  admirer  of  the  theories  of  Henry  George. 
He  declared  George  the  greatest  American  citizen  of 
the  present  time.  He  believed,  however,  in  a  system  of 
communal,  rather  than  a  national,  ownership  of  the 
land.  The  ideal  state  of  society  would  be,  to  him,  the 
simple,  rural  communes,  in  which  every  family  would 
have  the  right  to  till  soil  enough  for  its  own  support. 
There  would  be  no  taxes  and  no  government.  The 
Count  believed  that  all  forms  of  government  are  hum- 
bugs, and  that  the  whole  machinery  of  law  and  law- 
yers, courts  and  judges,  is  a  barbarity,  and  an  excuse 
for  setting  one  man  above  another,  and  enabling  the 
privileged  few  to  rob  the  many. 

Governments  he  regards  as  the  root  of  nearly  all  evils. 


I  o  6  THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  M  US  TA  NG. 


Tax  collectors  he  considers  highwaymen,  who  are  able 
to  rob  people  without  bloodshed,  simply  because  the 
tax-payers  know  that  it  would  be  useless  to  resist  the 
powerful  organization  of  which  they  are  members.  He 
was  looking  forward  to  a  day  when  men  would  see 
through  the  fiction  of  government  and  would  no  longer 
consent  to  be  robbed  of  money,  nor  to  be  instructed 
in  the  art  of  murdering  one  another  in  war. 

He  admires  America  because  we  have  only  a  hand- 
ful of  soldiers,  and  the  bitterness  of  his  soul  went  out 
to  the  armed  camps  of  which  Berlin  and  Paris  are  the 
centers.  In  his  younger  days  the  Count  was  an  officer 
and  saw  service  in  the  Crimean  war  ;  but  since  his 
conversion  the  earth  contains  for  him  no  more  mon- 
strous thing  than  a  body  of  men  drilling  and  practicing 
every  day  to  perfect  themselves  in  the  art  of  killing  the 
largest  number  of  their  brothers  in  the  shortest  pos- 
sible time. 

The  accumulation  of  vast  possessions  by  individuals 
the  Count  regards  as  one  of  the  great  evils  that  people 
have  become  so  accustomed  to  seeing  that  they  deem 
the  wrong  far  less  than  it  really  is.  He  believed,  how- 
ever, that  the  mission  of  the  large  American  million- 
aires would  be  to  hasten  the  climax,  when  the  eyes  of 
the  people  will  be  opened  by  the  display  of  tremendous 
contrasts.  The  moral  consciousness  of  the  people 
needs  a  rude  awakening,  he  thought,  and  only  the  de- 
velopment of  abnormal  contrasts  in  wealth  and  poverty 
is  likely  to  bring  the  people  to  consider  seriously  the 
equal  rights  of  all.  Just  as  the  undue  development 
of  the  military  will  one  day  result  in  general  disarma- 
ment, so,  he  believes,  will  the  vast  accumulations  of 


WITH  COUNT  TO  LSI  01. 


the  few  and  the  poverty  of  the  many  open  the  people's 
eyes  to  the  fact  that  banks  and  government  treasuries 
are  robber's  caves,  in  which  is  hoarded  the  money 
that  has  been  taken  from  the  people. 

The  Count,  however,  didn't  think  the  equalization 
of  property  will  be  brought  about  by  violence,  but  by 
a  general  moral  awakening.  Millionaires  will  become 
convinced  that  they  have  no  right  to  the  property  that 
they  now  regard  as  their  own,  and  will  give  it  up  ;  just 
as  he  would  be  willing  to  move  off  the  family  estate  at 
Yasnia  Polyana.  America,  he  thought,  will  one  day 
set  the  example.  England  will  follow  ;  then  Russia. 
The  thinkers  of  Russia,  he  said,  are  already  seriously 
studying  the  problem  of  doing  away  with  the  private 
ownership  of  land. 

One  could  not  talk  with  Tolstoi  for  any  length  of 
time  without  the  subject  of  religion-  coming  to  the 
fore.  Only  foolish  people,  he  said,  trouble  their  heads 
about  whether  there  is  or  is  not  a  personal  God  ;  or 
whether  Christ  was  or  was  not  more  than  human.  We 
have  our  conscience  for  our  guidance,  and  the  only 
thing  is  to  do  right.  People  are  mistaken  in  doing 
good  here  in  the  hope  of  future  reward.  This  is  the 
essence  of  selfishness.  It  prostitutes  the  best  in  hu- 
manity to  the  level  of  commerce.  There  is  no  merit 
in  making  a  bargain  by  which  .you  are  to  receive  a 
ruble  some  time  in  the  future  in  return  for  giving  a 
poorer  brother  a  kopeck  or  a  crust  of  bread  to-day. 
This  is  not  charity,  but  usury  pure  and  simple.  In 
Russia  the  best  Christians  are  those  who  never  go  to 
church.  Priests,  ministers,  and  churches  the  Count 
holds  in  scant  esteem.    The  priests  he  considered  as 


lo8  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


part  and  parcel  of  the  governmental  machinery  for 
grinding  the  faces  of  the  poor  and  living  without  work. 
To  swing  a  censer  and  chant  senseless  masses  is,  in 
his  opinion,  stage-acting.  The  time  wasted  on  this 
buffoonery,  if  devoted  to  planting  and  digging  pota- 
toes, would  suffice  them  to  earn  their  bread,  and  then 
there  would  be  no  need  of  preying  on  the  ignorant 
and  the  superstitious. 

Preachers  should  talk  less  about  the  future  state  and 
devote  themselves,  firstly,  to  earning  their  own  liveli- 
hood by  growing  grain  and  vegetables,  and,  secondly, 
to  bringing  about  the  kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth. 
The  Count  had  no  patience  with  sectarianism,  nor 
with  preachers  who  are  sticklers  for  certain  forms  of 
administering  baptism  or  the  sacrament.  The  spirit 
of  hostility  that  brings  ministers  of  the  gospel  on  to 
the  debating  platform,  he  said,  is  not  the  spirit  of 
Christ,  but  of  Satan.  Preachers  and  religious  teachers 
should  devote  their  energies  to  the  work  of  compro- 
mising and  the  bridging  of  differences  rather  than 
disputing. 

The  world  has  more  need  of  living  examples  than  of 
weekly  sermons.  If  all  the  preachers  in  the  world 
would  quit  their  fine  houses,  refuse  their  salaries,  and 
take  to  sowing  and  reaping,  and  preaching  every-day 
sermons  of  Christ-like  lives,  they  would  do  more  good 
in  a  week  than  they  do  now  in  a  lifetime.  According 
to  the  Count,  a  minister  of  the  gospel  who  accepts  a 
salary  and  lives  off  it,  is  a  robber.  The  only  difference 
between  him  and  a  footpad  is  that,  whereas  the  latter 
knocks  you  down  and  rifles  your  pockets,  the  minister 
gets  at  the  pockets  of  honest  people  by  a  more  inge- 


WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 


nious,  if  less  violent,  process.  In  both  cases  the  re- 
sults are  the  same:  botli  minister  and  footpad  eat 
food  that  they  never  produced  and  which,  conse- 
quently, cannot  possibly  be  theirs  by  right.  Such  is 
the  Count's  creed. 

I  found  Tolstoi  a  vegetarian,  and  convinced  that  the 
ideal  physical  life  is  that  of  the  Brahmins  of  India. 
He  believed  in  reducing  one's  wants  to  a  minimum, 
and  in  producing,  so  far  as  possible,  with  one's  ow  n 
hands  the  wherewithal  both  to  feed  and  clothe  the 
body.  A  state  of  society  in  which  the  condition  of 
one  would  never  be  such  as  to  excite  envy  in  another 
is  the  secret  of  true  social  happiness.  In  Russia,  the 
pilgrims  who  roam  the  country  over,  depending  for 
their  support  from  day  to  day  on  the  alms  of  the 
people,  approach  this  ideal,  and  Tolstoi  would,  so  I 
inferred  from  his  remarks,  become  a  pilgrim  himself 
were  it  not  for  the  restraints  of  family  ties  and  con- 
siderations. 

When  he  took  me  into  his  little  koumiss  establish- 
ment to  give  me  a  drink  of  the  beverage,  he  said 
with  enthusiasm,  that  with  an  acre  of  grass  land  and  a 
couple  of  milch  mares,  a  man  would  possess  ample 
property  for  his  support.  The  mares  would  live  off 
the  grass  and  the  man  could  milk  them  and  live  off 
koumiss. 

Temperance  finds  in  the  great  novelist  an  enthusiastic 
supporter.  He  neither  drinks  intoxicating  beverages 
nor  smokes,  and  he  includes  in  the  term  many  other 
indulgences  that  the  ordinary  advocates  of  temperance 
consider  apart  from  their  creed. 

In  his  creed   romantic  love  is  also  intemperance. 


1 1  o  THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  M  US  TA IV  G. 


The  tender  passion  that  has  from  all  time  been  the 
theme  of  the  poet  and  the  novelist,  Tolstoi'  deems  a 
species  of  moral  depravity,  on  a  par  with  gluttony,  the 
smoking  of  opium,  or  indulgence  in  strong  drink.  A 
person  finding  himself,  or  herself,  in  love,  particularly 
before  marriage,  should  fight  against  it  as  against  the 
opium  habit  or  any  other  pernicious  thing. 

Theater-going,  dancing,  romantic  literature  of  all 
kinds,  anything,  in  short,  that  excites  the  imagination 
to  thoughts  of  love,  is  intemperance.  Cupid  is  the 
devil  in  his  most  artful  guise. 

In  speaking  of  the  relations  of  the  sexes,  Tolstoi 
talked  with  the  same  freedom  from  restraint  as  if  he 
talked  of  digging  potatoes  or  mowing  hay. 

The  Countess  and  her  sister  from  St.  Petersburg  sat 
at  the  other  end  of  the  table  on  one  occasion,  when 
the  Count  was  particularly  inquisitive  about  the  natives 
of  East  Africa.  To  an  ordinary  mortal  the  situation 
would  have  been  embarrassing  in  the  extreme.  The 
ladies,  however,  were  busy  chatting  together,  and  their 
ears,  of  course,  were  closed  to  anything  the  Count  or  I 
might  have  said. 

Tolstoi  was  deeply  interested  in  the  social  life  of  the 
Masai  and  requested  that  a  copy  of  "  Scouting  for 
Stanley  in  East  Africa  "  might  be  sent  him. 

His  interest  in  the  relations  of  the  sexes  seemed  to 
me  to  be  abnormal,  almost  morbid.  Men  and  women, 
he  insists,  should  love  one  another  only  as  friends  or  as 
brothers  and  sisters.  Matrimony  brought  about  by 
romantic  love  is  an  unholy  and  unnatural  alliance, 
that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  resulted  in  unhappiness  for 
both  parties  to  the  contract. 


With  count  tolstoi.  lit 

The  keynote  of  the  Count's  peculiar  creed  is  14  no 
violence."  If  cuffed  on  one  cheek,  he  would  turn  the 
other.  No  matter  what  another  person  may  be  doing, 
the  utmost  force  that  is  permitted  to  be  used  against 
him  is  passive  resistance  or  persuasion.  14  If  a  man  robs 
you,  who  are  you  that  sets  yourself  up  to  judge  him 
whether  he  is  in  the  right  or  the  wrong  ?  One  man  has 
no  right  to  judge  another,  nor  to  assume  the  office  of 
executioner  by  using  violence  against  him.  If  a  man 
knocks  you  down,  who  knows  but  you  have  deserved 
it? 

44  One  person  has  no  right  to  use  violence  against 
another  under  any  circumstances  whatever,  not  even  to 
oppose  violence.  There  must  be  no  self-defense  be- 
yond passive  resistance.  To  subdue  the  passions  and 
gain  the  upper  hand  of  our  human  pride  is  man's  first 
duty  to  himself  and  to  his  fellows.  After  that,  all  the 
rest  will  come  easy  enough." 

After  listening  to  such  talk  the  Count's  advice  to 
keep  away  from  the  churches  sounded  oddly. 

An  American  minister  from  New  York  once  visited 
Tolstoi  at  Yasnia  Polyana.  Did  I  know  him?  I  did 
not;  and  although  Tolstoi  spoke  with  ever)-  mark  of 
respect  for  his  visitor  as  a  man,  he  let  it  be  very  plainly 
understood  that  the  less  the  rising  generation  had  to 
do  with  the  modern  expounders  of  the  gospels  the 
better  for  their  comprehension  of  the  true  religion  as 
he  conceives  it. 

Previous  to  his  conversion  the  Count  had  been  an 
atheist.  About  ten  years  before  there  was  a  census 
of  Russia.  It  is  the  custom  of  the  government  to  im- 
press the  students  of  the  universities  to  assist  in  taking 


112  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


a  census.  Tolstoi's  eldest  son  was  then  a  student  in 
Moscow,  and  the  father  accompanied  the  son  in  going 
his  rounds  to  number  the  people. 

The  task  took  them  into  some  of  the  Moscow  slums. 
The  scenes  of  squalid  poverty  and  wretchedness  that 
the  Count  was  then  brought  in  contact  with  was  the 
turning  point  in  his  career.  For  fifty  years  he  had 
lived  a  life  of  selfish  ease  and  pleasure.  He  had  been 
through  the  whole  mill  of  gay,  fashionable  existence. 
As  a  youth,  he  had  been  dissipated  ;  as  a  man,  well-to- 
do  and  successful.  The  world  had  been  to  him  a 
pleasure-ground,  and  the  future  a  subject  of  philosoph- 
ical speculation. 

He  went  home  a  changed  man.  It  seemed  as  if  all 
his  life  had  been  utterly  wasted.  The  selfishness  of  a 
life  that  had  been  largely  devoted  to  pleasure  and  self- 
seeking  now  seemed  to  him  an  enormity  of  error  and 
wrong.  How  should  he  expiate  the  great  crime  of 
fifty  years  of  wrong-doing? 

He  sought  consolation  in  the  existing  forms  of 
religion.  He  said  he  found  them  worse  than  honest 
atheism.  He  turned  to  the  Scriptures  and  independ- 
ent research  and  harkened  to  the  teachings  of  Sutaieff, 
a  free-thinking  peasant  of  Novgorod,  who  had  been 
persecuted  by  the  priests  for  independent  action  in  the 
matter  of  baptizing  his  children.  He  drew  inspiration 
from  the  child-like  simplicity  of  the  peasantry  on  his 
estate.  He  brought  to  bear  on  his  observations  and 
researches  the  mind  of  a  cultured  man  and  the  intellect 
of  a  genius.  The  result  has  been  the  teachings  that 
the  world  now  recognizes  as  the  Tolstoian  creed. 

After  he  had  become  convinced  that  salvation  lay  in 


WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 


113 


living  a  Christly  life  in  a  truly  unselfish  sense,  the 
Count  was  for  getting  rid  of  his  property  forthwith  by 
distributing  it  among  the  peasantry.  His  plan  was  to 
descend  at  once  to  the  level  of  the  poorest  of  those 
about  him,  and  earn  his  living  with  the  plow  and  the 
hoe.  That  this  was  not  done  was  due  entirely  to  the 
Countess  and  friends  of  the  family. 

Such,  then,  was  the  apostle  of  this  new  religion,  or, 
as  he  would  say,  of  the  Christian  religion  rightly  inter- 
preted, at  home.  Practical  people  in  America  would 
find  in  many  of  his  ideas  the  vagaries  of  an  ill-balanced 
but  brilliant  intellect. 

Genius-like,  he  was  not  always  logical  and  con- 
sistent. In  discussing  the  merits  of  Bellamy's  "Look- 
ing Backward,"  he  condemned  the  author's  judgment 
in  presuming  that  such  a  state  of  society  as  he  de- 
scribes would  be  possible  with  human  beings,  possessed 
with  the  weaknesses  and  frailties  of  our  kind.  Only 
angels,  he  said,  could  exist  under  such  conditions. 
Yet  in  the  case  of  these  same  human  beings,  with  the 
same  weaknesses  and  frailties  that  would  be  the  stum- 
bling block  in  Bellamy's  new  social  world,  he  advocated 
"  no  government,  no  police,  no  prisons,  no  army,  no 
church,  no  judiciary,  no  punishment  for  wrong  doing." 

The  Count's  ideas  of  what  is  best  were  still  in  a 
state  of  development.  A  couple  of  years  before  my 
visit  Mr.  Stead,  of  the  "  Review  of  Reviews,"  paid  him 
a  visit.  At  that  time  he  told  Stead  that  he  regretted 
every  moment  that  he  did  not  feel  he  was  dying.  He 
longed  to  have  done  with  this  world  and  to  fathom 
the  mystery  of  the  next.  Now  he  had  changed  his 
mind  and  told  me  his  only  fear  was  that  he  would  not 


ii4 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  OAT  A  MUSTANG. 


live  long  enough  to  finish  all  the  work  he  wanted  to 
do. 

The  wife  of  Tolstoi'  is  a  buxom  lady,  who  looked 
about  forty.  She  has  a  broad,  matronly  figure  ;  a  kind, 
motherly  face,  and  was  the  daughter  of  a  St.  Peters- 
burg physician.  She  is  the  mother  of  thirteen  children, 
of  whom  nine  were  living.  The  eldest  daughter  and 
the  two  youngest  children  were  at  home.  The  others 
were  traveling  or  away  visiting,  and  the  eldest  son 
was  officiating  as  Secretary  on  a  Commission  at  the 
Prison  Congress,  which  was  then  sitting  in  St.  Peters- 
burg. He  had  just  written  a  letter  to  his  mother,  ex- 
pressing disgust  at  the  round  of  speeches  and  dinners 
that  appeared  to  him  to  be  the  only  probable  outcome 
of  the  Congress. 

The  Countess  acted  as  her  husband's  amanuensis 
and  copyist.  She  copied  and  corrected  all  of  his  manu- 
scripts.   She  seemed  to  be  a  most  excellent  woman. 

The  family  life  appeared  to  be  altogether  charming. 
Both  wife  and  children  fairly  idolize  the  Count.  The 
nieces  also  think  their  uncle  the  embodiment  of  wisdom 
and  goodness,  and  the  only  point  on  which  they  openly 
take  issue  with  him  is,  naturally  enough,  on  the  sub- 
ject of  romantic  love  as  denounced  in  the  "  Kreutzer 
Sonata." 

These  young  people  do  not  always  fathom  the 
Count,  but  they  never  doubt  the  wisdom  of  his  actions 
or  the  goodness  of  his  motives.  Everything  he  does 
is  right.  If  you  venture  to  criticise  anything  the 
Count  has  said  or  done,  in  their  hearing,  they  defend 
him  stoutly.  * 

We  stayed  to  lunch  at  twelve,  then  rode  away.  In 


WITH  COUNT  TOLSTOI. 


the  house  of  strict  temperance,  where  the  master  lives 
on  curds  and  koumiss,  cutlets  and  a  bottle  of  wine  were 
set  out  for  the  visitors.  We  ate  the  cutlets  but  left 
the  wine  untouched. 

"  I  thank  you  very  much  for  coming,"  said  the  Count, 
as  he  shook  hands  and  advised  us  to  be  careful  of  our 
horses. 

"  I  wish  you  a  pleasant  journey  to  the  Crimea,"  said 
the  Countess,  "  and  a  safe  return  to  America." 

Russia  is  a  country  where  fantastic  religious  ideas 
seem  to  find  a  congenial  soil.  The  dwarfing  of  the 
people's  intellects  in  matters  political,  is  productive  of 
curious  expansions  in  other  directions.  Between  Mos- 
cow and  Tula  I  stumbled  upon  a  truly  queer  religious 
idea.  None  but  a  logical  mind  could,  however,  have 
conceived  it.  It  is  intended  chiefly  to  comfort  and 
console  people  of  a  doubting  and  skeptical  turn  of 
mind.  People  who  are  so  unfortunately  constituted 
that  they  don't  know  whether  or  not  to  believe  in  the 
existence  of  a  personal  God,  and  are  forever  casting 
about  for  light  on  the  subject,  arc  instructed  by  the 
new  religion-  to  "  pray  to  the  power  that  is  responsible 
for  their  existence."  By  adopting  this  broad  ground, 
all  fears  of  missing  the  mark,  so  to  speak,  are  done 
away  with,  and  none  need  be  afraid  of  going  astray 
through  ignorance  or  misconception. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


AMONG  THE  MOUJIKS. 


ROM  Moscow  to  Count  Tolstoi's  our  road  was 


1  through  the  northern  forest  zone,  where  the  mou- 
jiks  are  poor  and  superstitious.  In  many  of  the  win- 
dows of  the  peasants'  cottages  were  dead  branches 
and  faded  wreaths  of  ferns  and  twigs.  These  were 
reminiscent  of  the  Whitsuntide  celebrations,  which  the 
Russian  peasantry  keep  up  with  many  curious  cere- 
monies, remnants  of  their  old  heathen  rites. 

Games  that  were  formerly  celebrated  in  honor  of 
the  Goddess  of  Spring,  have  now  been  transferred  with 
changed  names  and  certain  modifications  to  the  Whit- 
suntide festivities.  On  the  Thursday  before  Whit- 
Sunday  the  peasants  flock  to  the  forests  and  devote 
themselves  to  singing  and  making  merry.  They  cut 
down  a  young  birch  tree  and  dress  it  in  gown  and  gar- 
land in  rude  imitation  of  a  female,  whom  they  further- 
more garnish  with  bright  ribbons  and  scraps  of  rag. 
This  is  the  Goddess  of  Spring,  in  whose  honor  they 
now  feast  and  make  merry  under  the  trees.  In  the 
evening  they  carry  the  goddess  home  with  them,  singing 
and  dancing  before  her  on  the  way,  and  install  her  as 
an  honored  guest  in  one  of  their  houses  till  Whit- 
Sunday.  Visits  of  ceremony  are  paid  to  her  by  the 
inhabitants  of  the  village  on  Friday  and  Saturday,  and 


AMONG  THE  MOUJIKS. 


117 


on  Sunday  they  take  her  to  the  nearest  pond  or  stream 
and  throw  her  in. 

On  Whit-Sunday  the  Russian  churches  are  decorated 
with  green  as  ours  are  on  Christmas  ;  and  the  flowers 
and  branches  are  preserved  and  taken  to  their  homes 
by  the  peasants,  who  believe  them  to  be  efficacious  in 
keeping  out  witches,  strange  domovois,  and  epidemic 
diseases. 

Many  strange  customs  still  obtain  in  different  parts 
of  Russia  in  connection  with  spring,  which  have  come 
down  from  the  ancient  heathen  worship  of  the  vernal 
Deity.  All  over  Russia  is  held  on  Thursday,  in  the 
seventh  week  after  Easter,  the  feast,  called  Semik. 
In  most  places,  the  Spring  Goddess  takes  the  form 
mentioned  above.  In  others,  however,  the  handsomest 
maiden  of  the  village  is  chosen  to  represent  Spring; 
she  is  enveloped  in  boughs  and  blossoms  and  carried 
about  by  the  other  girls.  In  the  evening  the  girls  and 
young  moujiks  join  in  a  circling  dance,  known  as  the 
khorovod.  The  maidens  wear  floral  wreaths  and  the 
youths  sport  flowers  in  their  hat-bands.  After  the 
dancing  is  over,  the  girls  repair  to  the  nearest  water 
and  toss  in  their  wreaths,  watching  them  anxiously  to 
see  whether  they  sink  or  swim,  float  ashore,  or  turn 
round  in  a  circle.  If  a  wreath  doesn't  run  ashore,  the 
lucky  damsel  who  has  been  wearing  it  will  have  long 
life  and  a  happy  marriage.  If  it  circles  round,  the 
wearer  will  become  the  victim  of  unrequited  love; 
and  if  it  sinks  she  will  either  become  an  old  maid  or 
meet  with  an  early  death. 

When  going  to  the  forest  to  manufacture  the  god- 
dess from  a  young  birch,  or  to  envelop  the  chosen  one 


n8 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


in  foliage,  the  maidens  sing  an  ode  addressed  to  the 
trees,  which  is  evidently  a  relic  of  ancient  tree-worship. 
The  oak  is  the  Summer  tree,  and  the  birch  the  tree  of 
Spring.    They  first  address  the  oaks,  singing  : 

Rejoice  not,  Oaks  ; 

Rejoice  not,  green  Oaks. 

Not  to  you  go  the  maidens, 

Not  to  you  do  they  bring  pies,  cakes,  omelettes. 

Then  turning  to  the  birches,  which  are  the  Semik 
or  seventh  week  (after  Easter)  trees,  they  sing,  raising 
their  voices  to  a  shout  : 

Io,  Io,  Semik  and  Troitsa  (Trinity)  ! 
Rejoice,  Birches,  rejoice  green  trees ! 
To  y 'on  go  the  maidens, 
To  yon  they  bring  pies,  cakes,  omelettes. 

At  the  present  day,  in  India,  the  natives  of  remote 
villages,  in  which  there  is  no  large  idol,  place  offerings 
of  food  at  the  foot  of  trees  that  have  been  made 
sacred  to  certain  of  their  gods.  And  a  common 
enough  sight  is  to  see  the  people  bowing  to  the 
ground,  apparently  worshiping  these  trees.  In  reality 
they  are  paying  their  devotions  to  the  god,  whom  the 
tree,  in  the  absence  of  the  idol  itself,  is  believed  to 
represent.  The  above  song  of  the  Russian  village 
maidens  seems  to  point  to  a  time  in  the  past  when 
offerings  of  food  were  also  made  to  trees  in  that 
country. 

From  one  end  of  Russia  to  the  other  there  is  one 
form  of  amusement  that  is  common  to  the  whole  peo- 
ple. It  is  the  circling  dance  known  as  the  khorovod. 
It  is  common  also  to  the  Slavs  of  other  countries,  be- 


AMONG  THE  MOUJIKS. 


119 


ing  in  fact  a  Slav  dance,  which  gives  it  a  broader  geo- 
graphical and  ethnographical  meaning.  The  writer 
has  seen  more  of  it,  indeed,  in  the  villages  of  Crotia 
and  Slavonia,  Austria-Hungary,  than  in  Russia.  The 
ride  through  Russia  was  made  during  hay-time  and 
harvest,  the  busy  season,  when  the  young  peasants 
have  little  time  for  khorovods  on  a  grand  scale.  But 
the  children  are  given  to  dancing  khorovods  of  an 
evening,  and  the  writer  also  saw  one  danced  by  a 
troupe  of  Little  Russians  in  one  of  the  summer  gardens 
of  St.  Petersburg. 

Near  every  village  is  an  open  spot,  where  on  holidays 
the  young  people,  arrayed  in  their  brightest  costumes, 
assemble  to  perform  khorovod  dances.  They  form 
themselves  in  a  circle,  as  in  the  old-fashioned  game  of 
kiss-in-the-ring,  and  commence  moving  round  and 
round,  this  way  and  that,  singing  songs  appropriate  to 
the  season  and  the  occasion.  There  are  spring  khor- 
ovods, performed  at  Easter  and  Whitsuntide;  summer 
khorovods  for  midsummer,  and  autumn  khorovods 
after  harvest.  Sometimes,  in  a  large  village,  two  khor- 
ovods are  formed,  one  at  each  end  of  the  broad,  long 
street,  of  which  there  is  only  one  in  a  Russian  v  illage, 
as  has  been  observed.  At  a  signal,  the  two  khorovods, 
which  may  be  a  verst  apart,  begin  moving  toward  each 
other,  preserving  the  circular  formation  in  the  broad 
road,  singing  and  circling,  until  they  come  together  in 
the  middle  of  the  village. 

The  songs  are  legion,  and  on  every  phase  of  Russian 
rural  life:  love,  marriage,  death,  harvest,  mother-in-law, 
and  what  not.  There  is  the  "  Millet-sowing  khorovod," 
the  "  Beer-brewing   khorovod,"  and  one  called  the 


120  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


"  Titmouse."  The  titmouse  khorovod,  as  well  as 
many  others,  has  a  sort  of  minor  dramatic  character. 
The  dramatis  persona  consists  of  the  Bullfinch,  a 
young  man,  or  a  girl  with  a  man's  hat  on;  the  Tit- 
mouse, his  sister,  and  any  number  of  marriageable 
maidens,  who  join  hands  and  form  a  ring  around  them. 
The  Bullfinch  wishes  to  get  married,  and  the  Titmouse 
has  assumed  the  responsibility  of  finding  him  a  suit- 
able spouse. 

The  khorovod  begins  to  circle  and  to  sing  in  the 
sad,  low  cadence  peculiar  to  Russian  village  maidens: 

Beyond  the  sea  the  Titmouse  lived  ; 

Not  grand,  nor  sumptuous,  was  her  state,  etc.; 

chorusing  observations  on  the  character  and  peculiari- 
ties of  many  different  birds.  A  feast  is  held,  at  which, 
according  to  regular  Russian  tradition,  the  man  look- 
ing for  a  bride  may  pick  and  choose  among  the  many 
who  are  to  be  present. 

The  widow  Owl,  though  uninvited,  came.  .  .  . 
The  Owl  caressed  the  feathers  of  her  head.  .  .  . 
Why  ever  don't  you  marry  Bullfinch,  dear  ?  .  .  .  etc. 

The  Bullfinch  passes  various  shrewd  opinions  on  the 
merits  or  demerits  of  the  several  candidates  :  "  I'd  take 
the  Magpie — but  she  chatters  so," — and  finally  winds 
up  by  choosing  the  Quail,  a  plump  and  useful,  rather 
than  ornamental,  bird. 

Generally  the  songs  of  the  khorovods,  when  not  de- 
voted to  any  particular  theme,  deal  with  the  old,  yet 
ever  new,  story  of  love.  A  peculiarity  of  these  village 
love  songs  is  that  they  seldom  treat  of  the  sentiment  in 


AMONG  THE  MO  U J  IKS. 


1  2  I 


a  joyous,  triumphant  mood  ;  but  deal  almost  exclu- 
sively with  its  sad  and  melancholy  phases.  It  is  a 
maiden  repining  for  her  lover,  who  has  died  or  gone 
away;  a  youth  lamenting  the  perfidy  of  his  sweet- 
heart, who  has  jilted  him  for  the  sake  of  a  richer  suitor  • 
a  young  couple  whose  parents  forbid  them  to  marry; 
a  young  wife  whose  husband  has  died  or  been  drafted 
into  the  army ;  a  maiden  carried  off  by  marauding  Tar- 
tars; a  hard  mother-in-law,  who  ill-uses  the  young 
bride — these  are  the  melancholy  themes  of  the  love 
songs  of  the  Russian  peasants.  The  melody  of  the 
songs,  too,  is  in  harmony  with  the  sentiments,  being 
sung  in  a  sad,  low,  wailing  tone, — a  lamentation  rather 
than  a  song. 

The  songs  of  the  khorovods,  indeed,  arc  in  keeping 
with  the  whole  character  of  the  Russian  land,  life,  and 
institutions.  They  are  in  harmony  and  color  with  the 
monotonous  gray  of  the  level  steppes,  and  the  bound- 
less wilderness  of  the  northern  forests;  level,  sad,  and 
melancholy  to  the  senses.  From  Archangel  to  Astra- 
khan there  is  neither  mountain  nor  beauteous  valley  ; 
in  the  equally  broad  realm  of  Russian  popular  song  the 
general  tone  is  correspondingly  monotonous.  In  spirit, 
the  songs  breathe  the  tragedy  of  the  people's  life  and 
history.  The  story  of  the  Russian  peasantry  is  a  mel- 
ancholy history  of  toil,  sorrow,  suffering,  and  despair. 
Their  songs  are  a  reflection  of  their  history  ;  and  where 
they  sometimes  aspire  to  comedy,  a  hollow,  counter- 
feit, almost  pitiful  ring  may  readily  be  detected.  Their 
humorous  efforts  treat  almost  exclusively  of  the  uni- 
versal vice  of  drunkenness  among  the  moujiks,  and  of 
wife-beating. 


122  THRO  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUS  TA  NG. 


A  fair  specimen  is  the  khorovod  "  A  Wife's  Love." 
A  youth,  and  maiden,  who  represent  the  husband  and 
wife,  are  surrounded  by  the  circle  of  singers.  The  hus- 
band offers  his  wife  a  present,  which  she  seizes  and 
flings  contemptuously  to  the  ground.  The  khorovod 
singers,  amazed  at  this  exhibition  of  wifely  insubordi- 
nation, sing: 

Good  people,  only  see! 

She  does  not  love  her  husband  at  all ! 

Never  agrees  with  him,  never  bows  down  to  him ; 

From  him  turns  away  ! 

The  husband  goes  to  the  bazaar  and  buys  a  whip, 
which  he  offers  his  wife  as  a  more  acceptable  present 
than  the  one  she  threw  on  the  ground.  When  he 
brings' a  whip  in  his  hand,  she  receives  him  with  every 
mark  of  affection  ;  and  after  a  blow  with  it  she  bows 
very  low  and  submissively,  and  rewards  him  with 
kisses.  The  khorovod  singers  laugh  approvingly  and 
change  their  song  : 

Good  people  only  see ! 
How  well  she  loves  her  lord  ! 

Always  agrees  with  him  ;  always  bows  down  to  him  ; 
Gives  him  kisses,  even. 

But  the  subject  of  wife-beating  is  not  always  treated 
of  humorously  in  the  khorovods.  One  popular  song 
runs  thus : 

Beat  not  thy  wife  without  a  cause  ; 
But  only  for  good  cause  beat  thy  wife  ; 
And  for  a  great  offense, — etc. 

These  circling  choral  dances  are  believed  to  be  of 
very  remote  antiquity  among  the  people  of  Russia. 


AMONG  THE  MO  U J  IKS. 


123 


They  seem  to  be  allied  to  somewhat  similar  dances 
performed  by  the  Greeks,  and  doubtless  had  their 
origin  in  pagan  ceremonies,  when  the  devotees  formed 
in  circles  round  their  idols.  Near  Tula,  the  first  large 
town  we  rode  through  after  leaving  Moscow,  is  a  ring 
of  stones,  which,  according  to  a  legend  of  the  dis- 
trict, represents  a  khorovod  of  singing  maidens,  who, 
while  circling  round,  were  suddenly  transformed  into 
stones. 

In  the  winter,  when  the  khorovods  or  other  outdoor 
games  are  out  of  season,  the  young  people  indulge  in 
social  gatherings  at  each  other's  homes,  called  in  some 
districts  Besyedi,  in  others  Posidyelki.  Special  even- 
ings are  appointed  by  the  social  leaders  of  the  com- 
munity, and  one  of  the  moujiks  offers  them  the  use  of 
his  house  for  the  occasion.  The  maidens  usually  take 
some  light  work  with  them,  such  as  knitting,  or  spin- 
ning wool  or  flax.  The  young  men  who  may  be  pos- 
sessed of  musical  talents  bring  their  instruments, 
which  are  usually  a  rude  sort  of  flageolet  or  flute  made 
of  lengths  of  reed,  or  the  balalaika  of  Little  Russia,  a 
simple  stringed  instrument.  Refreshments,  consisting 
of  kwass  and  rye  cakes,  or  if  the  entertainers  for  the 
occasion  are  able  to  afford  the  luxury,  piroghi,  a  sort 
of  meat  pie,  that  Russians  of  the  better  classes  eat  at 
the  beginning  of  their  dinner  with  the  soup,  are  pro- 
vided. The  evening  is  spent  in  singing  songs  with  a 
rousing  chorus,  dancing,  and  listening  to  stories  from 
the  lips  of  long-tongued  old  women,  or  garrulous  old 
moujiks  with  a  reputation  as  story-tellers,  and  deposi- 
tories of  folk-lore  and  tradition. 

The  dances  consist  of  standing  in  rows  or  in  a  circle, 


124 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


forming  a  sort  of  indoor  khorovod,  while  several  of 
the  number  take  the  middle  of  the  floor,  turning  alter- 
nately to  one  another  their  backs  and  faces,  meanwhile 
singing  and  stamping  time  with  the  feet.  The  songs 
of  the  Posidyelki  gatherings  treat  chiefly  of  the  senti- 
ments of  love  and  marriage  : 

Remember,  dear,  remember, 
My  former  love, 

How  we  two  together,  my  own,  would  wander, 
Or  sit  through  the  dark  autumn  nights, 
And  whisper  sweet  secret  words. 

Thou,  my  own,  must  never  marry. 

I,  the  maiden,  will  never  wed  ! 

Soon,  very  soon,  my  love  has  changed  her  mind: 

Marry,  dear,  marry  !    I  am  going  to  wed. 

In  Little  Russia,  more  particularly,  these  social 
gatherings  last  all  night,  the  party  breaking  up  at 
dawn.  People  who  have  seen  something  of  the  flirta- 
tions of  the  young  burlaks  and  servant  girls  in  St. 
Petersburg,  where  after  ten  o'clock  of  an  evening, 
while  walking  the  streets,  you  are  constantly  stumb- 
ling up  against  young  workmen  hugging  and  kissing 
their  sweethearts  in  the  untrusty  shadows  of  porches 
and  doorways,  need  only  to  be  told  that  flirtation  is 
one  of  the  recognized  privileges  at  the  Posidyelki,  and 
that  the  village  moujik's  ideas  of  flirtation  are  even 
more  crude  than  the  burlak's. 

In  some  districts  it  is  customary,  instead  of  holding 
the  Posidyelki  at  each  house  of  the  village  in  turn,  to 
select  the  largest  and  most  suitable,  and  rent  it  for  the 
evenings  of  the  entire  winter.  The  young  men  pay  a 
couple  of  kopecks  an  evening,  or  a  quarter  of  a  ruble 


AMONG  THE  MOUJIKS. 


for  the  season.  The  moujik  who  owns  and  lives  in  the 
selected  cottage  derives  a  revenue  of  ten  or  fifteen 
rubles  from  the  enterprise  each  winter,  and  considers 
himself  very  well  recompensed  for  the  trifling  annoy- 
ance of  having  his  home  converted  into  a  pandemo- 
nium of  dance  and  song  about  every  night  for  several 
months. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


SCENES  ON    THE  ROAD. 


OR  the  first  week  of  our  ride  the  weather  was  sul- 


1  try,  and  occasional  thunder-showers,  and  some- 
times dismal  rainy  days,  contributed  to  the  discomforts 
of  both  horses  and  riders.  Green-head  horse-flies 
attacked  Texas  and  his  companion  by  the  hundreds ; 
and  their  ravenousness  was  intensified  by  the  stormy 
character  of  the  weather  to  such  a  degree  that  nothing 
but  a  blow  would  cause  them  to  relinquish  their  hold. 
Texas,  being  a  peculiarly  thin-skinned  and  particular 
sort  of  animal,  danced  and  capered  along,  kicking, 
striking,  and  biting  at  them  every  step  of  the  way,  the 
very  picture  of  equine  misery.  Occasionally  he  con- 
sidered himself  worried  to  a  point  that  would  justify 
him  in  lying  down  in  the  road  and  rolling,  regardless 
of  the  fact  that  a  human  being  was  in  the  saddle  ;  and 
he  would  pause  and  impudently  essay  a  certain  signifi- 
cant and  time-honored  movement  of  the  legs,  peculiar 
to  his  tribe,  preliminary  to  carrying  out  this  heroic 
method  of  ridding  himself  of  his  tormentors. 

Perhaps  it  was  owing  to  the  flies,  but  along  these 
early  stages  of  the  journey  he  developed  a  remarkable 
fondness  for  sidling  up  against  Sascha's  horse  and  en- 
deavoring to  persuade  that  more  sedate  animal  to  halt 
and  permit  him  to  rub  himself  against  him  as  against 
a  tree  or  fence.    Finding  these  cajolings  of  no  avail, 

126 


SCENES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


127 


owing  to  the  objections  of  every  other  member  of  the 
party,  he  eventually  took  to  scrubbing  up  against  him 
as  we  rode  along.  Our  fortunes  at  night  were  various, 
though  always  of  a  degree  calculated  to  humble  us  to 
the  level  of  the  rude,  uncivilized  life  and  unrefinements 
of  the  moujik.  Sometimes  we  stayed  at  traktirs,  but 
in  the  smaller  villages,  where  the  prospective  consump- 
tion of  vodka  and  weak  tea  would  not  justify  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  house  of  public  accommodation,  we 
had  to  seek  refuge  with  a  moujik. 

Traktirs,  as  everything  else  in  Russia  that  is  patron- 
ized by  the  commoner  subjects  of  the  Czar,  are  regarded 
by  the  authorities  chiefly  as  teats  from  which  the 
largest  possible  yield  of  taxes  are  to  be  milked.  A 
roadside  traktir,  according  to  a  proprietor  of  one  whom 
we  questioned,  pays  a  tax  of  .500  rubles  a  year  and  up- 
ward ;  and  a  courtyard  for  the  accommodation  of  teams, 
250  rubles. 

No  wonder  these  people  are  picayunish  and  over- 
reaching in  their  small  way,  and  disposed  to  make  the 
utmost  of  any  casual  stranger  who  comes  along.  The 
moujiks  presented  a  somewhat  less  monotonous  level 
of  commercial  depravity  than  the  proprietors  of  the 
traktirs  ;  but  the  general  level  of  all  was  disagreeably 
low.  The  tendency  of  all  from  whom  we  were  com- 
pelled to  seek  accommodation  for  man  and  beast,  seemed 
to  be  to  get  the  utmost  possible  number  of  kopecks 
out  of  us,  and  part  from  next  to  nothing  in  return. 
Most  of  them  would  simply  speculate  on  our  neces- 
sities, and  take  advantage  of  the  fact  that  we  had  to 
accept  what  they  chose  to  supply  us  with  or  go  with- 
out. 


12  8  THRO  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUS  TA  NG. 


The  writer's  preconceived  idea  of  rural  Russia  was, 
that  it  would  be  found  a  country  very  poor  as  to  ready 
money,  but,  nevertheless,  a  rude  plenty  in  the  matter 
of  horse-feed  and  coarse  food.  The  first  proposition 
turned  out  to  be  singularly  correct,  and  rye  bread  was 
tolerably  plenty,  but  it  was  occasionally  impossible  to 
get  a  feed  of  oats  for  our  horses,  and  I  doubt  whether 
Texas  had  a  half-dozen  feeds  of  decent  hay  on  the  whole 
journey.  The  "  hay  "  was  almost  invariably  nothing 
but  weeds  ;  and,  in  striking  contrast  to  the  American 
custom  of  supplying  it  to  a  traveler's  horse  in  gener- 
ous armfuls,  a  pair  of  scales  would  be  brought  forth, 
and  "  skoolka  pfund  ?  "  (how  many  pounds?)  would  be 
the  question.  And,  regardless  of  its  glaring  worthless. 
ness,  the  amount  called  for  would  be  weighed  as  critically 
as  though  it  were  the  most  precious  and  valuable  com- 
modity, the  veriest  pinches  being  deducted  to  avoid 
over-weight.  A  particularly  annoying  advantage  that 
was  as  often  as  not  taken  of  us,  in  the  bargain,  was  to 
select  the  moldiest  and  most  utterly  worthless  armfuls 
that  could  be  found,  with  the  choice  of  that  or  nothing 
at  all.  The  idea  seemed  to  be  to  take  advantage  of 
strangers,  to  dispose  of  what  they  couldn't  very  well 
get  rid  of  to  regular  customers. 

In  the  matter  of  food,  they  were,  almost  without  ex- 
ception, abominably  lazy,  and  reluctant  to  put  them- 
selves to  extra  trouble,  even  for  the  sake  of  earning 
money.  Milk  was  easy  to  obtain,  for  the  reason  that 
no  trouble  was  required  beyond  fetching  it  out  of  the 
cellar  ;  and  it  was  often  of  excellent  quality  and  accept- 
ably cold.  A  suggestion  to  cook  a  chicken,  or  even  to 
fry  us  eggs,  invariably  brought  a  positive  negative  as  to 


SCENES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


129 


the  chicken,  and  a  counter-suggestion  of  "  samovar" 
on  the  question  of  the  eggs. 

"Samovar"  meant  that  it  would  be  less  trouble  to 
cook  the  eggs  in  the  same  water  that  was  being  boiled 
to  make  tea,  a  handy,  slip-shod  method  exceedingly  con- 
genial to  a  shiftless,  reluctant  mind.  There  were  ex- 
ceptions, however,  and  they  are  as  memorable  as  fresh 
little  oases  on  a  journey  across  a  desert,  no  less  from 
their  scarcity  than  from  their  striking  contrast. 

After  leaving  Count  Tolstoi's,  the  nature  of  the 
country  and  the  character  of  the  villages  underwent  a 
change.  We  were  leaving  the  region  where  all  had 
formerly  been  covered  with  forest,  and  were  getting 
into  the  borderland  between  forest  and  steppe.  The 
houses  of  the  moujiks  were  no  longer  built  exclu- 
sively of  wood  ;  but,  commencing  with  Yasnia  Polyana 
itself,  at  least  half  the  number  in  the  villages  were  of 
brick.  The  moujiks  make  their  own  bricks,  and  for 
the  most  part  build  their  own  houses.  In  work  of  this 
sort,  which  in  most  countries  would  be  performed  by 
professional  brick-layers  and  carpenters,  the  moujiks 
are  probably  cleverer  than  the  peasants  in  almost  any 
other  country  in  the  world.  To  a  man,  almost,  they 
arc  expert  with  an  ax,  and  can  hew  logs  and  build  a 
house  far  neater  than  the  American  backwoodsman. 

In  building  a  log-house,  the  walls  arc  calked  with 
hemp,  twisted  up  like  a  hay  rope  and  punched  tightly 
into  every  crack  and  crevice.  The  house  is  put  to- 
gether close  to  where  it  is  to  stand,  and  then  moved 
into  its  proper  position  by  means  of  rollers  and  levers. 
Whilst  in  process  of  building,  a  rude  wooden  cross  is 
erected  close  by,  presumably  as  a  measure  of  protec- 


130  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 

tion  against  the  interference  of  evil  spirits  and  witches. 

Curious  ceremonies  are  performed  in  connection  with 
occupying  a  new  house,  varying  somewhat  in  different 
parts  of  Russia,  but  all  clearly  allied  to  the  rites  and 
ceremonies  of  old  heathen  times. 

It  is  believed  that  if  the  builders  call  out  the  name 
of  any  one  whilst  delivering  the  initiative  blows  of  the 
axes,  the  person  denominated  will  immediately  go  into 
a  decline  and  quickly  die.  By-standers  are  particularly 
-  deferential  toward  the  builders  during  the  preliminaries 
of  putting  up  a  house,  lest  offense  might  be  given  ;  and 
the  former  are  expected  to  call  out  the  name  of  some 
bird  or  animal,  in  proof  that  they  have  not  maliciously 
brought  evil  upon  any  of  their  neighbors. 

In  many  parts  of  Russia  the  foundations  of  the  new 
house  are  sprinkled  with  the  blood  of  some  victim 
slaughtered  for  the  purpose — nowadays,  a  fowl  or  young 
kid  ;  but  in  ancient  pagan  times,  probably  a  human 
being.  The  head  of  the  slaughtered  fowl  or  animal  is 
cut  off  and  buried  under  the  corner  of  the  new  edifice 
that  is  to  be  occupied  by  the  ikons,  the  most  vener- 
ated part  of  the  house. 

Another  part  of  the  new  house,  to  which  great 
ceremonial  importance  is  attached,  is  the  threshold. 
Precautions  are  taken  to  prevent  any  one  crossing  it 
until  it  has  been  crossed  by  the  oldest  member  of  the 
family  who  is  to  occupy  it,  and  a  cross  is  made  on  it  to 
bar  the  ingress  of  witches  and  objectionable  spirits. 
In  various  provinces  some  venerable  household  god, 
such  as  a  small  ikon,  or  relic  of  a  saint,  that  has  been 
for  a  long  time  an  heirloom  of  the  family,  is  buried 
under  the  threshold  ;  and  the  more  superstitious  of 


SCENES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


the  peasants  are  extremely  reluctant  to  sit  down  on  the 
threshold  of  a  house.  In  some  places,  if  a  child  is  still- 
born in  the  house  it  is  the  custom  to  bury  it  under  the 
threshold  ;  and  when  a  child  has  been  baptized,  it  is 
held  over  the  threshold  for  a  minute  or  two  on  the  way 
home  from  the  church.  To  wash  a  sick  child  over  the 
threshold  is  also  believed  to  be  almost  as  efficacious  a 
remedy  as  sprinkling  it  with  holy  water. 

When  a  family  are  moving  out  of  an  old  house  into 
a  new  one,  everything  portable  is  removed  from  the 
former  residence,  and  a  fire  is  kindled  in  the  stove  by 
the  oldest  female  member  of  the  family.  At  midday, 
the  embers  of  this  farewell  fire  are  put  in  a  jar  and 
carefully  carried  to  the  new  domicile  and  placed  in  the 
new  stove.  The  jar  is  smashed  and  the  fragments  care- 
fully collected  and  buried  in  the  same  corner  that  has 
been  honored  with  the  head  of  the  sacrificial  cock  or 
lamb  at  the  laying  of  the  foundations. 

When  peasants  migrate  long  distances,  and  the  jar 
of  embers  cannot  possibly  be  managed,  they  are  care- 
ful to  take  with  them  a  relic  of  some  kind  from  the  old 
stove,  to  be  incorporated  with  the  one  they  expect  to 
build  in  their  new  home.  In  connection  with  the 
house-changing  ceremonies,  moreover,  great  impor- 
tance is  attached  to  certain  formulas  addressed  to  the 
domovoi,  or  house  spirit,  who  is  cordially  invited  to 
accompany  the  family  to  their  new  home,  and  is  wel- 
comed at  the  threshold  of  the  new  house  by  the  heads 
of  the  family  with  bread  and  salt. 

The  removal  of  the  domestic  ikons  is  a  matter  of 
considerable  ceremony  in  many  places,  where  the 
moujiks  seem  to  have  gone  little  further  in  their  con- 


1 3  2  THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  M  US  TA  NG. 


version  to  Christianity  than  to  transfer  their  heathen 
conceptions  and  ceremonies  from  the  household  idols 
of  their  ancestors  to  the  holy  ikons  of  the  Orthodox 
religion.  A  cock  and  hen  are  carried  into  the  new- 
house  and  turned  loose,  whilst  the  head  of  the  family 
respectfully  holds  the  ikons  until  the  cock  crows, 
before  placing  them  in  their  new  corner.  As  great 
misfortune  would  come  upon  the  family  should  chan- 
ticleer refuse  to  lend  his  support  to  this  all-important 
ceremony,  care  is  taken  to  ascertain  beforehand  the 
crowing  proclivities  of  the  various  members  of  the  farm- 
yard flock,  so  as  to  select  one  that  maybe  depended  on 
to  make  himself  heard  in  no  uncertain  manner. 

On  the  ninth  day  of  the  ride  we  crossed  the  second 
provincial  boundary  line,  which  took  us  out  of  the 
province  of  Tula  into  Orel,  and  we  passed  through  the 
town  of  Msuesue.  Strange  to  say,  we  here  discovered, 
among  the  moujiks,  a  local  peculiarity  that  one  is  almost 
sure  to  find  among  the  peasants  of  certain  localities  in 
any  Eastern  country.  In  reply  to  our  inquiries  about 
distances,  they  always  replied  that  it  was  a  "  verst  and  a 
half,"  regardless  of  the  actual  distance.  You  find  the 
same  thing  in  Persia  and  in  Asiatic  Turkey.  It  is  sim- 
ply a  curious  phase  of  Oriental  politeness,  which  leads 
the  people  to  give  the  traveler  an  answer  such  as  they 
imagine  will  fall  pleasantly  on  his  ear.  In  certain  parts 
of  Persia,  the  writer  found  it  next  to  impossible  to 
learn  the  actual  distance  to  any  given  point  ahead, 
owing  to  this  extremely  annoying  peculiarity.  They 
take  it  for  granted  that  the  desire  of  the  questioner  is 
to  arrive  as  quickly  as  possible  at  the  end  of  the 
fatigues  and  discomforts  of  the  road,  and  so  they  sim- 


SCENES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


133 


ply  give  rein  to  the  nonsensical  politeness  of  misinform- 
ing him  as  to  the  distance,  in  order  to  minimize  it 
and  win  his  momentary  approval. 

In  Orel  we,  as  a  matter  of  course,  excited  the  suspi- 
cions of  the  police,  who,  however,  contented  themselves 
with  merely  keeping  a  close  watch  upon  our  move- 
ments until  we  left  the  city.  The  streets  of  Orel  were 
disreputably  rough  even  for  a  Russian  provincial  city, 
and  the  whole  place  seemed  such  a  wretched  dust-hole 
that  we  halted  in  it  only  long  enough  to  get  dinner 
and  to  give  our  horses  a  few  hours'  rest.  As  in  any 
other  Russian  town  the  conspicuous  objects  were  the 
churches  and  the  prison.  At  the  doors  of  the  churches 
stood  old  men,  mechanically  jingling  little  hand-bells, 
and  extending  to  passers-by,  for  donations,  alms-re- 
ceivers decorated  with  crosses. 

A  peculiar  feature  of  religious  fanaticism  and  men- 
dicancy in  Russia  are  certain  old  men  who  sometimes 
take  their  stand  at  favorable  points  in  the  cities,  and 
sometimes  wander  about  all  over  the  empire,  from  vil- 
lage to  village,  like  the  wandering  dervishes  of  Persia. 
These  men  have  taken  vows  to  collect  money  enough 
to  build  a  church  for  the  salvation  of  their  own  souls, 
or  they  hold  commissions  from  one  or  other  of  the  big 
churches  of  Moscow  or  Kiev  to  collect  money  for  re- 
pairs or  other  purposes.  They  simply  devote  their 
lives  to  wandering  about  and  begging  for  money,  and 
because  it  is  not  for  theirown  use,  but  for  religious  pur- 
poses, they  are  able  to  accumulate  large  sums. 

Here,  it  seemed  to  the  writer,  newly  impressed  at 
this  time  with  the  financial  slipperiness  of  the  people 
along  the  road,  was  a  particularly  fine  field  for  the  ex- 


134 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


ercise  of  small  knavery,  by  collecting  donations  from  the 
Orthodox  and  easily-gulled  moujiks,  under  the  pretense 
of  wishing  to  build  a  church.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
this  would  be  an  exceedingly  congenial  game  to  any 
number  of  Russians ;  but  my  companion  assured  me 
that  this  class  of  fraud  was  positively  unknown  among 
them,  owing  to  their  dread  of  incurring  the  wrath  of  the 
saints.  There  was  probably  no  mistake  whatever  about 
this  explanation.  One  who  might  be  the  biggest  rogue 
in  all  Russia  in  dealing  with  his  fellows,  would  tremble 
in  his  boots  with  fear  at  the  suggestion  of  bamboozling 
the  saints  by  collecting  money  falsely  in  their  name. 
And  on  the  road,  in  any  dangerous  part  of  the  country 
infested  by  Orthodox  robbers,  the  toe-nail  or  shin-bone 
of  a  saint,  bearing  the  "  hall-mark  "  of  Holy  Kiev  to 
prove  its  genuineness,  would  be  a  better  protection  to 
the  traveler  than  a  whole  arsenal  of  revolvers. 

All  through  the  provinces  of  Orel  and  Kursk,  our  ears 
were  gladdened, — evening,  night,  and  morning, — by  the 
singing  of  an  astonishing  number  of  nightingales.  The 
forests  seemed  alive  with  them,  and  of  an  evening 
fairly  rang  with  their  sweet  melody.  Whether  influ- 
enced by  the  cheeriness  and  the  example  of  these  forest 
songsters,  or  whether  this  particular  part  of  Russia  is 
blessed  with  some  mysterious  property  of  earth  or  air 
that  inspires  the  vocal  muse  in  humans  as  well  as  birds, 
seemed  a  reasonable  enough  fantasy  in  which  to  indulge 
one's  mind  ;  for  here,  too,  we  heard  more  singing  from 
the  village  maidens  than  at  any  other  part  of  the  ride. 
Nightingales  are,  indeed,  said  by  some  authorities  to 
be  more  plentiful  in  this  part  of  Russia  than  in  any 
other  country.    It  would  be  interesting  to  know  what 


SCENES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


135 


attracts  such  numbers  of  them  to  this  particular 
locality. 

In  the  villages  we  now  began  to  see  small  and  tem- 
porary rope-walks,  and  the  cultivated  landscape,  which 
farther  north  presented  chiefly  fields  of  rye  and  pota- 
toes, here  displayed  broad  areas  of  hemp,  one  of  the 
great  staples  of  Russian  export.  The  village  rope- 
walks  were  the  property  of  itinerant  rope-walkers,  who 
wander  over  the  country  from  village  to  village  to  ply 
their  trade.  They  usually  have  a  horse  and  telega  to 
convey  their  rope-making  paraphernalia,  and  in  all  re- 
spects live  the  life  of  gypsies  and  tinkers.  They  make 
the  hemp  crops  of  the  moujiks  into  rope  of  various 
sizes  for  a  small  amount  per  pood,  and,  when  they  have 
exhausted  the  stock  of  customers  in  one  village,  pull 
up  stakes  and  move  on  to  the  next. 

It  was  in  the  village  of  Subazhna  where  a  youthful 
assistant  to  one  of  these  rope-makers  gave  me  a  new 
idea  of  the  extent  to  which  the  curse  of  vodka-drink- 
ing has  undermined  the  moral  perceptions  of  the  rural 
Russians.  It  was  a  wet,  miserable  day,  and  we  were 
compelled  to  remain  over  at  the  village  traktir.  It 
was  some  sort  of  a  holiday,  and  the  traktir  was  full 
of  roystering  moujiks,  spending  the  day,  as  moujiks 
spend  all  their  holidays, — drinking  themselves  into  a 
beastly  state  of  intoxication. 

I  had  taken  a  little  table  out  under  the  shed  and 
was  writing  a  letter,  when  there  came  reeling  out  of 
the  back  door  the  youth  in  question,  well-nigh  help- 
lessly drunk.  He  was  not  more  than  twelve  years  old, 
and  was  endeavoring,  in  a  pitifully  maudlin  way,  to 
make  a  display  of  jollification.    Over  and  over  again 


I36  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


he  fell  sprawling  in  the  mud,  and  it  was  pouring  with 
rain.  At  length,  after  staggering  about  the  yard  and 
falling  a  number  of  times,  insensibility  or  helplessness 
overcame  him,  and,  already  drenched  to  the  skin  and 
plastered  with  mud,  the  poor  little  wretch  fell  like  a 
log  into  a  puddle  of  mud  and  slush,  the  most  pitiable 
case  of  "  drunk  and  incapable  "  that  it  had  ever  been 
my  misfortune  to  see. 

This  was  not  later  than  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning. 
And  a  particularly  revolting  sight  was  to  see  full-grown 
men,  still  in  the  possession  of  their  senses,  taking  no 
other  notice  of  this  child,  lying  there  drunk  in  the 
pelting  rain,  than  to  make  some  trifling  and  quite  in- 
different attempt  at  jocularity  at  his  expense.  Sascha 
and  I  carried  him, under  the  shed  and  laid  him  on 
some  hay,  a  proceeding  that  attracted  ten  times  as 
much  notice  as  did  the  condition  of  the  precocious 
bibber,  from  the  men  whom  he  had  beaten  in  the  reck- 
less race  to  get  into  the  gutter  and  thereby  glorify  the 
saint  in  whose  honor  they  were  spending  the  holiday. 

When  we  had  been  a  couple  of  hours  on  the  road, 
next  day,  Sascha  suddenly  discovered  that  he  had  lost 
his  passport ;  and  when,  at  noon,  we  reached  a  village, 
it  seemed  indeed  a  curious  verification  of  the  old 
maxim  that  "  misfortunes  never  come  singly,"  that 
we  should  for  the  first  time  on  the  ride  make  the  un- 
welcome acquaintance  of  an  uriadnik. 

Of  all  the  vast  multitude  of  bureaucratic  satellites 
that  revolve  about  the  throne  and  the  sacred  autoc- 
racy of  the  Great  White  Czar,  to  prevent  it  being 
blown  over  by  the  breath  of  public  opinion,  my  readers 
are  commended  to  the  uriadnik,  as  a  valuable  study  in 


SCENES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


137 


the  science  of  paternal  government  as  it  is  understood 
at  St.  Petersburg. 

The  uriadnik  first  appeared  on  the  stage  in  1878; 
and  in  the  great  Russian  drama  of  "  The  Czar  and  his 
Loyal  Moujiks,"  plays  the  part  of  rural  autocrat  among 
the  latter.  Commencing  in  this  picturesque  role,  he 
has  succeeded  in  working  his  way  up  to  the  distin- 
guished position  of  first  villain  in  the  Russian  tchin. 
His  most  critical  and  competent  judges  are  the  mou- 
jiks, whom  his  existence  and  the  exercise  of  his  talents 
mostly  concern  ;  and  from  one  end  of  Russia  to  the 
other,  the  writer  could  get  from  them  but  one  verdict, 
which  was  that  the  uriadnik  is  the  prettiest  combina- 
tion of  police-tyrant,  bribe-taker,  blackmail-levier,  and 
all-round  scourger  of  his  children,  that  their  amiable  and 
well-meaning  father,  the  Czar,  has  allowed  to  be  laid 
on  their  backs.  The  very  word  "  uriadnik,"  is  indeed 
likely  to  always  remain  in  use  among  the  Russian  peas- 
antry, even  should  they  and  the  entire  dramatis  per soiicc 
of  the  paternal  government  one  day  disappear,  and  it 
will  be  as  the  synonym  of  as  many  attributes  of  ras- 
cality as  could  possibly  be  crowded  into  the  character 
of  one  person.  The  wearers  of  the  title  have  become 
a  by-word  among  the  moujiks,  who  have,  since  their 
introduction  among  them,  been  brought  into  closer 
touch  with  the  governing  body  than  they  were  before. 

As  the  Czar  is  autocrat  of  Russia,  and  a  Governor- 
General  of  his  province,  so  is  the  uriadnik  autocrat  of 
the  village  community.  Prior  to  1878,  the  moujiks 
were  left  very  much  to  the  management  of  their  own 
village  affairs,  and  if  they  paid  their  taxes  promptly, 
and  allowed  their  minds  to  remain  dormant  on  the 


138  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


perilous  questions  of  State  politics  and  religion,  were 
not  likely  to  be  annoyed  and  harassed  in  their  daily 
life.  When  the  Nihilists  commenced  to  stir  things  up, 
however,  prior  to  the  assassination  of  Alexander  II, 
and  a  particularly  active  crusade  was  inaugurated 
against  them,  a  full  share  of  the  repressive  measures 
fell  on  the  people  for  whose  liberation  the  desperate 
knights  of  bomb  and  pistol  professed  to  be  working. 
A  force  of  near  6000  uriadniks  was  organized  and 
scattered  throughout  rural  Russia,  and  given  police 
powers  in  the  village  communes  ;  and  in  Russia  "  police 
powers  "  means  well-nigh  anything  under  the  sun  in 
the  shape  of  tyrannical  and  irresponsible  interference 
with  the  private  citizen. 

Like  all  Russian  officials,  the  uriadnik  is  underpaid, 
and  would  find  it  very  difficult  indeed  to  keep  up 
appearances  consistent  with  the  importance  of  his 
official  position,  if  he  had  no  other  source  of  income 
than  his  salary.  The  office  of  uriadnik  is  worth  200 
rubles  a  year,  or  about  $10  a  month.  Yet  you  see 
these  gentlemen  sporting  gold  watches,  and  they  ap- 
pear, on  the  otherwise  monotonous  and  colorless  field 
of  Russian  rural  life,  full-blown,  well-nourished,  even 
gorgeous  flowers.  They  have  far  more  tyrannical 
power  over  the  peasantry  than  has  the  Turkish  zaptieh 
among  the  villages  of  Asia  Minor. 

Though  "  paternal,"  the  Russian  government  scarcely 
seems,  in  any  of  its  relations,  part  of  the  same  family  as 
the  people.  In  a  constitutional  country  the  police- 
man, despite  his  uniform  and  baton,  always  gives  the 
impression  of  being  in  familiar  touch  with  the  people, 
even  those  whose  heads  he  may  be  on  the  point  of 


SCENES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


!39 


cracking  ;  and  there  is  a  subtle  spirit  of  apology  in  his 
bearing  and  movements.  It  is  as  though  he  were  say- 
ing to  his  fellow-citizens,  whom  he  is  ordering  to  "  move 
on,"  "  It's  my  duty,  you  know,  and  I  have  no  option 
but  to  order  you  about  ;  otherwise  I  should  be  very 
happy  to  let  you  loiter  and  look  in  the  windows  or  do 
anything  else  you  please." 

All  this  is  reversed  in  the  Russian  police.  They, 
forsooth,  are  anything  but  the  servants  of  the  people, 
and  they  always  impressed  me  as  invaders  and  con- 
querors of  the  country.  They  represent  the  Czar,  the 
autocratic  power  ;  and  their  bearing  is  insufferably  in- 
solent, or  condescendingly  tolerant,  according  to  the 
disposition  of  the  individual  policeman  or  the  status 
of  the  person  before  him.  The  uriadnik  in  the  peas- 
ants' village  has  the  same  arbitrary  powers  of  domi- 
ciliary visit  as  the  highest  police  authorities  have  in 
the  cities.  He  can  invade  the  houses  of  the  people 
without  warning  or  preliminary  preparation  of  any 
kind,  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night.  On  the  grounds 
of  his  own  suspicions,  he  is  empowered  to  make  noctur- 
nal visitations,  and  to  tumble  people  out  of  their  beds, 
search  their  houses  from  roof  to  cellar,  and  play  bull 
in  the  china-shop,  generally,  among  the  people.  Even 
the  most  malignant  Turkish  zaptieh  has  no  such  powers 
as  these. 

He  is  required  by  the  powers  at  St.  Petersburg  to 
exercise  the  same  paternal  authority  over  the  every- 
day affairs  of  the  people  as  villagers,  as  they  do  in  a 
national  sense.  His  duties  embrace  such  supervisory 
tasks  as  compelling  the  moujiks  to  throw  open  their 
windows  for  purposes  of  ventilation,  to  keep  their  floors 


1 4°  THRO  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  M  US  TA  NG. 


swept  clean,  and  all  manner  of  sanitary  and  inquisi- 
torial inspection.  In  theory,  this  sort  of  inspection  is 
no  doubt  rather  to  be  commended  than  otherwise  ;  the 
trouble  is,  that  not  one  Russian  in  ten  thousand  is  fit 
to  be  intrusted  with  powers  that  practically  leave  the 
people  at  his  mercy.  The  writer  has  slept  in  rooms  in 
Russian  villages  where  the  windows  had  evidently  not 
been  opened  from  one  year's  end  to  another,  for  venti- 
lation seems  as  unnecessary  and  uncongenial  to  a 
moujik,  and  even  to  many  Russians  of  considerable 
education,  as  to  a  mole. 

The  "  best  room,"  in  nearly  every  village  traktir  we 
stayed  at  over  night,  was  notoriously  in  need  of  being 
thrown  open  for  ventilation  by  the  uriadnik.  The 
writer  found  the  air  in  them,  that  had  been  boxed  up 
all  summer,  so  insupportable  that  I  used  to  go  and 
sleep,  by  preference,  under  the  shed  with  the  horses. 
Sascha,  however,  didn't  seem  to  care  ;  or,  at  all  events, 
it  seemed  to  his  Russian  mind  "  so  much  like  a  moujik 
to  sleep  with  the  horses,"  that  he  preferred  the  dangers 
of  suffocation  in  foul  air.  I  expected  to  get  up  some 
morning  and  find  him  a  ghastly  corpse  ;  but,  somehow, 
he  survived  to  the  end. 

It  is  not  the  proprietors  of  traktirs,  however,  not  the 
gentleman  whose  cellar  contains  barrels  of  vodka,  and 
who  owns  a  half  dozen  samovars,  always  ready  to  be 
steamed  up  for  the  making  of  tea,  that  ever  feels 
the  inconvenience  of  the  inquisitorial  powers  of  the 
uriadnik.  In  one  village,  where  the  traktir  sleeping- 
room  had  to  all  appearances  been  sealed  up  since 
winter,  we  heard  a  queer  story  of  a  moujik  whose 
window  had  been  thrown  open  nearly  every  day  during 


SCENES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


141 


the  long  bitter  winter  by  an  over-zealous  uriadnik,  in 
this  case  over-zealous  for  reasons  that  would  not  be 
very  difficult  to  guess. 

One  hardly  knows  what  quarter  to  turn  to  for  the 
responsibility  of  the  uriadnik.  Considered  apart  from 
the  motive  that  prompted  his  creation  and  distribution 
among  the  peasantry,  the  Russian  government  cer- 
tainly committed  no  heinous  crime  in  organizing  a 
rural  constablery,  a  privilege  well  within  the  rights 
of  the  most  liberal  of  governments.  Considering  also 
the  criminal  indifference  of  the  moujiks  in  sanitary 
matters,  one  can  hardly  blame  the  authorities  for 
ordering  summary  lessons  to  be  given  them  in  ele- 
mentary sanitation  and  the  like.  Here,  however,  the 
tolerable  ends  ;  and  despotism  begins  with  the  right 
of  domiciliary  visit,  without  warrant  or  responsibility. 

But  the  chief  responsibility  for  the  evil  reputation 
that  attaches  itself  to  their  office,  rests  on  the  uriadniks 
themselves.  And  the  underlying  explanation  is  to  be 
found  in  the  lamentable  fact  that  it  is  quite  out  of  the 
question  to  find  in  Russia  a  body  of  men  equal  to  the 
moral  obligations  of  an  honest  performance  of  the 
uriadnik's  duties.  Were  the  entire  tribe  in  possession 
of  the  field  to  be  suddenly  seized  and  hanged,  and  a 
fresh  batch  of  average  subjects  of  the  Czar  told  off  to 
fill  their  places,  in  six  months  the  new  gang  would  be 
as  ripe  for  the  hangman's  noose  as  their  predecessors. 

As  a  general  thing,  the  uriadniks  content  themselves 
with  accepting  small  bribes,  which  are  given  to  them 
by  people  by  way  of  propitiation,  in  order  to  be 
allowed  to  live  in  peace,  and  to  blackmailing  such 
persons  as  seem  to  be  reluctant  and  unmanageable  in 


142 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


the  matter  of  bribes.  There  are  uriadniks,  however, 
who,  like  the  domovois  on  the  30th  March,  are  given 
to  fits  of  wanton  deviltry,  seemingly  out  of  spontane- 
ous and  irrepressible  exultation  over  the  opportunities 
of  their  position.  Stories  are  current  of  uriadniks  en- 
tering moujiks'  houses,  and,  on  the  ground  of  defective 
sanitary  practices,  upsetting  jars  of  milk  and  tubs  of 
picked  cucumbers  on  to  the  floor. 

In  many  of  the  villages  south  of  Tula,  one  of  the 
standing  precautions  against  fire  that  the  moujiks  are 
required  to  maintain  is  to  keep  ready  to  hand,  beside 
the  water-buckets,  axes,  etc.,  previously  mentioned,  a 
swab  attached  to  a  long  pole,  which  is  to  be  dipped  in 
water  for  flogging  a  blazing  roof.  An  uriadnik  is  said 
to  have  once  discovered  attached  to  one  of  these  fire 
poles,  instead  of  the  regulation  swab,  a  dead  magpie, 
which  the  owner  of  the  house  had  fastened  there  as  a 
precaution  against  witches.  The  zealous  officer  was 
naturally  indignant,  and  determined  to  make  an  ex- 
ample of  the  offender  that  would  be  remembered  for 
some  time,  carried  it  into  the  house  and  added  it, 
feathers,  corruption,  and  all,  to  the  kettle  of  cabbage 
soup  which  the  house-wife  was  boiling  for  the  family 
dinner.  As  the  magpie  is  a  bird  which  was  cursed 
centuries  ago  by  a  Moscow  metropolitan,  and  is  there- 
fore unholy,  the  kettle  of  soup  had  to  be  thrown  away. 

But  to  return  to  the  narrative  of  our  own  experi- 
ences on  the  road,  our  first  uriadnik,  who  had  turned 
up  in  so  curious  a  manner  at  the  exact  moment  when 
we  could  least  afford  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
gentlemen  of  his  kidney,  as  though  uriadniks  had  the 
faculty  of  scenting  from  afar  the  vulnerable  points  of 


SCENES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


143 


the  rest  of  mankind,  as  buzzards  scent  from  astonish- 
ing distances  a  carcass,  turned  out  to  be  a  reasonable 
sort  of  a  chap  after  all.  After  considerable  bargaining 
and  casual  references  to  the  smallness  of  an  uriadnik's 
salary,  he  finally  accepted  the  trifling  sum  of  three 
rubles,  in  consideration  of  which  he  would  close  his 
eyes  to  the  fact  that  Sascha  had  no  passport  at  all  and 
mine  was  "  irregular."  The  least  we  could  do  to  show 
our  appreciation  of  this  extremely  moderate  demand 
was  to  take  him  into  the  traktir  and  set  up  a  friendly 
samovar  of  tea. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


INTO  MALO  RUSSIA. 

ON  Sunday  morning,  July  13,  we  rode  into  the  pro- 
vincial capital  of  Kursk ;  and  applied  at  the  police 
station  for  a  renewal  of  Sascha's  passport.  Strange  to 
say,  we  were  not  received  with  anything  beyond  a  mild 
and  reasonable  degree  of  suspicion  by  the  police 
authorities  of  Kursk.  The  population  of  Kursk,  how- 
ever, is  pre-eminently  Orthodox,  and  the  principal  busi- 
ness of  the  police  officials  being,  in  consequence,  of  a 
monotonously  routine  character,  their  bumps  of  suspi- 
cion are  of  less  abnormal  development  than  in  localities 
intellectually  wider  awake.  The  chief  features  of  the 
police  station  were  the  vast  number  of  documents 
piled  on  the  tables  and  desks,  and  an  exceedingly  pom- 
pous gentleman,  whom  we  immediately  decided  must 
be  no  less  a  personage  than  the  Governor-General,  but 
who  afterward  turned  out  to  be  the  assistant  chief  of 
police,  with  a  salary  of,  perhaps,  2000  rubles  a  year,  or 
$20  a  week. 

One  of  the  stock  grievances  that  the  Russians  have 
against  the  Germans,  is,  that  a  German  officer,  with  the 
salary  of  a  journeyman  tailor,  will  assume  airs  and  ape 
the  hauteur  of  a  prince  with  an  enormous  income.  It 
must  not,  therefore,  be  supposed  that  in  speaking  of 
the  tremendous  personalities  seen  among  the  police 
officers  of  the  Russian  service,  that  these  worthy  gen- 

144 


INTO  MA  10  RUSSIA. 


145 


tlemen  are  guilty  of  imitating  the  people  whom,  of  all 
others  in  the  world,  they  most  cordially  hate.  It  is 
true  that  they  also  sometimes  outshine  princes  with 
enormous  incomes,  while  drawing  the  salaries  of  jour- 
neymen tailors,  but  they  manage  to  do  it  in  a  different 
way  from  that  of  the  Germans.  The  difference  is, 
that  whereas  the  German  official  manages  to  do  it  on 
his  salary,  it  cannot  be  reiterated  too  often  that  the 
salary  of  a  Russian  police  officer  has  very  little  bearing, 
indeed,  on  the  size  of  his  income. 

But  all  this  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 
portly  and  theatrical  gentleman  whose  personality 
made  the  police  station  of  Kursk  a  memorable  spot  on 
our  ride  ;  he  being,  no  doubt,  an  exceptionally  honest 
and  trustworthy  official.  Far  be  it  from  the  writer  to 
express  the  smallest  suspicion  to  the  contrary,  seeing 
that  the  gentleman  in  question,  instead  of  taking  a 
cynically  suspicious  interest  in  us,  appeared  chiefly  de- 
sirous of  exhibiting,  for  our  edification,  the  pompous 
and  portentous  aspects  of  human  vanity,  thereby  hop- 
ing to  make  such  an  impression  on  our  minds  as  would 
cause  us  to  remember  him  to  the  end  of  our  lives. 
That  he  succeeded  in  this,  seems  very  probable,  since, 
whenever  my  mind  happens  to  revert  to  the  subject  of 
the  Russian  police,  the  figure  that  invariably  looms  up 
in  the  foreground  is  that  of  a  remarkably  pompous 
gentleman,  six  feet  or  more  in  height,  weighing  400 
pounds,  and  clad,  July  13,  in  a  heavy  gray  ulster  over- 
coat, warm  enough  for  January  13,  that  reached  to  the 
floor,  who  issued  from  the  inner  sanctum  sanctorum  of 
the  Kursk  police  station,  and  startled  the  numerous 
underlings  about  the  room  nearly  out  of  their  skins,  by 


1 46  THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  M  US  TA  JVC. 


stamping  impatiently  with  his  foot.  Having  startled 
the  scribes,  secretaries,  and  policemen  in  this  manner, 
the  assistant  police  master  beamed  inquiringly  in  our 
direction  a  moment  through  his  spectacles  and  then 
passed  out. 

In  Kursk,  as  in  most  provincial  Russian  cities,  the 
motive  that  prompts  anybody  to  seriously  take  up  their 
residence  in  it  is  a  positive  enigma  to  a  foreigner.  In 
summer  the  people  seem  to  exist  chiefly  for  the  purpose 
of  assembling  every  evening  in  a  little  public  garden, 
illumined  with  colored  lamps,  where  they  circle  round 
and  round  a  fountain  and  peer  into  each  other's  faces 
to  the  music  of  a  military  band,  kindly  provided  by  the 
courtesy  of  His  Excellency  the  Governor-General  of 
the  province.  On  this  particular  Sunday  evening  there 
were  to  be  extraordinary  doings  in  the  little  garden,  in 
virtue  of  which  a  small  admission  fee  was  charged. 
Rockets  and  bombs,  which  exploded  and  hissed  in  fiery 
flight  about  6  o'clock  P.M.,  announced  to  the  city  that 
the  performances  for  the  evening  had  begun. 

We  made  our  way  thither  and  mingled  with  the 
gathering  throng.  We  called  for  tea  and  cigarettes  at 
the  garden  restaurant,  and,  seated  at  a  table,  watched 
the  proceedings  with  considerable  interest.  There  was 
a  sack-race  around  the  fountain  for  an  accordion  ;  and 
any  number  of  abortive  efforts  on  the  part  of  men  and 
boys  to  "climb  to  the  summit  of  a  greased  pole,  the 
prize  being  in  this  case  a  samovar.  The  proprietors  of 
the  entertainment  seemed  to  have  taken  good  care  that 
the  pole  should  be  so  thoroughly  covered  with  grease 
that  they  would  have  been  quite  safe  even  had  they 
put  up  a  prize  of  a  million  rubles. 


INTO  MALO  RUSSIA. 


147 


There  were  more  rockets  and  bombs,  and  then 
everybody  paused  in  their  circular  promenade  around 
the  fountain  to  witness  the  dispatch  of  a  tissue-paper 
balloonlet.  At  the  flight  of  the  little  messenger  to  the 
clouds  there  was  an  universal  clapping  of  hands,  and 
everybody  looked  supremely  happy.  All  then  resumed 
the  serious  business  of  walking  round  and  round. 
There  were  a  good  many  ladies,  the  ilite  of  Kursk,  and 
a  good  many  more  who  seemed  to  be  even  more  ele- 
gant ladies  than  the  real  ladies  ;  some  were  pretty,  and 
a  good  many  more  owed  their  pretensions  to  the  same 
to  the  kindly  influence  of  the  colored  lamps  and  the 
charitable  twilight  of  the  ending  day. 

The  military  and  the  police  were  in  the  majority 
among  the  gentlemen,  and  private  citizens  seemed  to 
be  nowhere.  Our  friend,  the  assistant  chief,  was  very 
much  on  hand,  overcoat  suspended  cavalierly  from  his 
shoulders  like  a  Spanish  cloak,  he,  evidently,  having 
better  use  for  his  arms  than  to  thrust  them  in  the 
sleeves.  The  arms  were  utilized  as  he  walked, — not 
round  and  round,  as  everybody  else  was  doing,  but  at 
eccentric  angles,  from  one  part  of  the  garden  to  another, 
for  the  purpose  of  greeting  his  many  friends  with  a 
glad  and  sudden  surprise — utilized  to  bulge  out  the 
coat  to  such  ample  breadth  that  he  seemed  to  require 
as  much  space  as  a  full  half  dozen  ordinary,  private 
subjects  of  the  Czar. 

The  greater  part  of  the  following  morning  was  spent 
in  endeavoring  to  overcome  the  prodigious  difficulties 
of  dispatching  a  valise  off  by  rail  to  Ekaterinoslav.  By 
means  of  a  vast  deal  of  patience,  and  efforts  that  came 
near  being  superhuman,  we  succeeded  in  eventually 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


getting  the  railway  employees  to  exchange  a  receipt 
for  our  money,  and  to  take  the  responsibility  of  for- 
warding the  valise.  There  were  no  suspicions  here, 
however,  to  overcome — nothing  but  red  tape  ;  skeins  of 
that  precious  claptrap  commodity  having  to  be  un- 
raveled at  eight  different  desks  and  departments  ere  a 
common  traveler's  valise  could  be  sent  away. 

At  the  police  station  we  obtained,  for  rubles,  a 
genuine  Russian  responsibility-shirking  document  for 
my  companion  ;  a  sort  of  a  "  house-that-Jack-built  " 
paper,  stating  that  he  had  come  there  and  said  he  had 
lost  his  passport,  which  he  said  he  had  obtained  in 
Moscow,  in  which  city  he  had  said  he  resided,-  and  in 
which  city  he  had  said  he  had  received  his  education  ; 
together  with  a  whole  string  of  other  "  saids,"  but 
which  as  a  passport  was  of  no  account  whatever. 

South  of  Kursk  we  began  to  find  a  decided  and 
exceedingly  welcome  improvement  in  the  interiors  of 
the  people's  houses.  Here  and  there  we  were,  at  first, 
astonished  to  find  houses  that  were  clean  and  sweet 
within,  and  before  reaching  Kharkoff  we  were  among 
a  people  who  whitewash  their  interiors  every  six 
weeks,  an  improvement  indeed  upon  the  moujiks  of 
the  northern  forests.  We  were  getting  into  the  famous 
"  black  earth  region,"  and  a  change,  too,  came  over  the 
life  to  be  seen  in  the  fields.  Men  were  harrowing 
newly  plowed  fields  with  as  many  as  four  harrows 
strung  one  behind  another  ;  and  on  the  road  we  met 
single  teamsters  in  charge  of  as  many  as  ten  telegas. 

Wheat,  rye,  and  oat  harvest  was  in  progress,  and 
the  fields  were  alive  with  moujiks  and  their  wives  and 
children,  all  taking  a  hand.    As  a  general  thing,  the 


INTO  MALO  RUSSIA. 


149 


grain  was  cut  with  cradles,  swung  by  the  men,  and  the 
women  did  the  binding.  There  were,  however,  many 
females  who  wielded  reaping  hooks.  Regular  camps 
were  formed  in  the  fields,  since  the  fields  were  often 
many  versts  away  from  the  villages  ;  and  a  novel  fea- 
ture of  the  camps  would  be  the  babies  in  swinging 
cribs  suspended  to  rude  tripods,  and  the  toddlers  next 
in  size  taking  care  of  them.  Occasionally  might  be 
seen  the  mothers,  leaving  their  reaping  or  binding  to 
kneel  beside  the  cribs  and  indulge  themselves  and  in- 
fants, the  one  as  truly  gratified  to  give  as  the  other  to 
receive. 

Near' the  town  of  Oboiyan,  both  men  and  horses 
came  near  scoring  a  catastrophe  in  a  stream  with  a 
bottom  of  quicksand.  Texas,  being  the  livelier  horse 
of  the  two,  managed  to  scramble  out  almost  before  lie 
was  in  ;  but  Sascha's  animal  got  fairly  into  it,  and 
whilst  plunging  about  pitched  his  rider  heels  over  head 
into  the  sand  and  water.  Luckily  both  horse  and 
rider  escaped  with  no  greater  damage  than  a  wetting 
and  a  fright. 

Beyond  Oboiyan  the  northern  moujik  and  his  red 
shirt  began  to  gradually  fall  into  the  background,  and 
the  white-shirted  peasants  of  Little  Russia  to  take  his 
place.  The  moujik  of  Malo  (Little)  Russia  cuts  a  less 
picturesque  figure  in  the  fields  than  his  Muscovite  con- 
freres of  the  north.  In  tlie  fields  of  the  forest  zone 
the  red  specks  conjured  up  the  comparison  of  poppies, 
and  in  our  gayer  moods  it  was  by  this  floral  title  that 
we  would  call  one  another's  attention  to  them.  But 
by  no  stretch  of  the  imagination,  nor  by  any  enchant- 
ment born  of  distance,  would  it  be  possible  to  call  the 


150  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


moujik  of  Malo  Russia  a  flower.  His  raiment  consists 
of  a  coarse  white  shirt  and  loose  black  trousers,  top 
boots,  and  almost  any  kind  of  a  hat  that  comes  his  way. 

"  Poppies  "  were  yet  reasonably  numerous,  however; 
and  at  noon  on  July  11,  we  halted  for  refreshments  at 
a  wayside  traktir,  kept  by  a  very  energetic  old  lady, 
who  immediately  took  us  into  her  confidence  in  regard 
to  the  laziness  and  all-round  worthlessness,  of  a  young 
gentleman  in  a  red  shirt  to  whom  she  bore  the  relation- 
ship of  mother-in-law.  The  old  lady  was  one  of  the 
singularly  few  persons  I  came  across  in  Russia  who 
seemed  to  have  positive,  rather  than  negative,  qualities 
of  mind  and  body  ;  and  almost  without  asking  us  what 
we  wished  to  eat,  she  set  about  making  us  a  big 
omelette,  and  boiling  potatoes.  Her  son-in-law,  she 
avowed,  was  the  disappointment  of  her  life.  She  was 
a  farmer  as  well  as  proprietor  of  the  traktir,  and  her 
ambition  had  been  to  secure  a  husband  for  her  daugh- 
ter who  would  make  a  success  of  the  farm  whilst  she 
attended  to  the  traktir.  As  it  turned  out,  she  and  her 
daughter  had  to  perform  most  of  the  work,  whilst  the 
son-in-law  did  little  beyond  eating  what  they  earned, 
drinking  vodka,  and  sleeping  on  top  of  the  stove. 

When  we  rode  up,  both  daughter  and  son-in-law 
were  out  in  the  harvest  field;  but  the  old  lady  assured 
us  that  it  was  the  daughter  alone  who  was  doing  any 
work.  The  son-in-law,  she  said,  would  be  found 
snoozing  beneath  a  shock  of  grain,  pretending  to  be 
ill. 

A  couple  of  hours  after  our  arrival,  the  object  of  the 
old  lady's  wrathful  denunciations  turned  up  to  sharpen 
his  scytjie  and  eat  his  dinner.    He  turned  out  to  be  a 


INTO  MA  10  RUSSIA. 


poor  little  sallow-faced  chap,  who  looked  the  very 
picture  of  misery.  Suspecting  that  he  was,  probably, 
more  sinned  against  than  sinning,  and  she  likely  to  turn 
out  the  finest  specimen  of  "  mother-in-law  "  we  should 
stumble  upon,  we  asked  him  what  was  the  trouble 
between  him  and  his  wife's  mother.  He  replied  that 
the  old  lady  never  gave  him  a  moment's  peace  ;  that 
she  wanted  him  to  work  night  and  day,  and  was  for- 
ever accusing  him  of  being  unkind  to  her  daughter. 

"  My  wife,"  said  he,  "  is  a  good  deal  bigger  and 
stronger  than  I  am,  as  you  can  see  for  yourselves  ;  how, 
then,  can  I  be  unkind  to  her?  Is  it  possible  that  a 
small,  weak  dog,  should  treat  unkindly  one  that  is 
half  as  big  again,  and  twice  as  strong,  as  it?  M 

The  mother  sometimes  kicked  up  such  a  row,  he 
added,  that  there  was  nothing  left  for  him  but  to  try 
and  take  his  own  part  ;  in  which  case,  sometimes, 
mother  and  daughter  got  him  down  on  the  floor  and 
beat  him.  The  daughter,  who  had  also  returned  to  the 
house,  was  of  a  truth  the  bigger  and  stronger  of  the 
two,  and  in  the  matter  of  energy  she  seemed  a  worthy 
chip  off  the  maternal  block.  We  asked  the  son-in-law 
why  he  didn't  seek  happiness  in  flight,  and  the  answer 
we  received  appeared  to  indicate  that  the  mothers-in- 
law  of  Russia,  like  the  police,  have  a  powerful  ally  in 
the  passport  regulations  of  the  country.  He  couldn't 
leave  without  a  passport,  he  said,  and  this  it  would  be 
quite  impossible  for  him  to  obtain  without  the  consent 
of  his  wife  and  mother-in-law. 

"  But  your  mother-in-law  wishes  you  were  dead,"  we 
protested;  "  surely  she  would  place  no  obstacle  in  the 
way,  if  you  wished  to  clear  out." 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


"  Pooh  !  she  only  talks  that  way,"  returned  he  ;  "  the 
reason  she  wouldn't  let  me  go  is  because  I  do  more 
work  than  both  of  them  together." 

This  young  man  was  well-nigh  the  last  of  the  "  pop- 
pies "  seen  in  the  roadside  fields,  though  red-shirts  are 
numerous  in  the  cities  of  the  South  as  well  as  in  the 
northern  part  of  the  Empire. 

All  through  this  part  of  the  country  an  article  in 
great  request  among  the  moujiks  was  paper  for  the 
making  of  rude  cigarettes.  Shepherds,  particularly, 
would  come  running  to  the  road  from  considerable  dis- 
tances to  beg  pieces  of  paper.  One  day  we  asked  one  of 
these  shepherds  whether  it  was  likely  to  be  wet  weather, 
the  shepherds  being  regarded  as  the  best  weather- 
prophets  in  the  country.  His  test,  in  reply  to  our 
query,  was  to  moisten  his  forefinger  with  his  mouth, 
then  hold  it  up  for  a  few  seconds, — a  primitive  sort  of 
barometer,  indeed. 


CHAPTER  X. 


SUSPICIOUS  PEASANTS. 

ON  the  evening  of  July  19  we  arrived  in  Kharkoff, 
a  city  of  200,000  inhabitants,  and  one  of  the  uni- 
versity towns  of  Russia.  About  3500  students  find 
accommodation  in  its  various  institutions  of  learning. 
It  is  the  metropolis  of  Little  Russia  ;  and  on  its  streets 
are  seen  more  handsome  women  than  in  any  other  city 
of  the  Empire,  save  Warsaw.  It  has  numerous  splen- 
did churches,  with  interiors  all  ablaze  with  riches,  and 
of  its  one  hundred  versts  of  streets,  fifty  versts  are 
execrably  paved  and  the  other  fifty  not  paved  at  all. 

This  glaring  difference  between  the  wealthines*s  of 
the  churches,  and  the  poverty  or  indifference  of  the 
municipalities  in  Russian  cities,  was  always  a  matter  of 
controversy  between  myself  and  companion.  His  ex- 
planation was  that  the  St.  Petersburg  government  was 
actively  at  the  back  of  the  churches,  whilst  the  cities 
had  to  look  after  their  own  streets.  Special  medals 
are  given  for  donations  of  5000  rubles  and  upward  to 
churches,  and  as  these  medals  are  much  coveted  by 
wealthy  merchants,  who  have  no  other  means  of  ob- 
taining decorations,  the  churches  simply  roll  in  wealth. 
It  seemed,  indeed,  that  this  ingenious  method  of  coax- 
ing donations  from  wealthy  parvenues,  might  with 
equally  happy  results  be  applied  to  the  far  more  need- 

153 


154 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


ful  improvement  of  the  streets,  which  in  all  cities,  save 
St.  Petersburg,  are  simply  abominable. 

We  bought  a  Kharkoff  morning  paper  of  the  date  of 
our  arrival  in  that  city.  It  contained  this  delightfully 
accurate  piece  of  news  : 

Mr.  Thomas  Sveepos,  an  American  gentleman  who  is  riding  on 
horseback  from  Moscow  to  the  Black  Sea,  will  leave  Kursk  this 
morning,  e7i  route  to  Kharkoff.  He  is  accompanied  by  a  Moscow 
student,  A.  Krega  (Sascha's  name  was  Kritsch).  After  complet- 
ing this  novel  undertaking,  Mr.  Sveepos  intends  riding  around  the 
world  on  a  bicycle  (!). 

On  the  way  out  of  Kharkoff  we  were  honored  for 
the  space  of  a  couple  of  hundred  yards  with  the  com- 
pany of  a  gentleman  with  an  exceedingly  rusty  coat, 
an  exceedingly  husky  voice,  and  an  exceedingly  purple 
nose.  His  nationality  was  as  uncertain  as  his  gait, 
though  we  judged  him  to  be  a  Russian  of  French  or 
Italian  descent.  Seeing  us  pass  by,  he  issued  from  a 
vodka-shop,  and  hailing  us  as  "  Franzositch  corre- 
spondenta  "  offered,  for  the  price  of  a  drink  of  vodka,  to 
sing  us  a  song  from  Lermantoff.  This  tempting  offer 
was  not  to  be  resisted,  and  so  we  immediately  took  him 
up,  stipulating  that  he  should  sing  it  while  keeping 
pace  with  us.  Receiving  his  reward,  he  doffed  his  hat 
and,  bidding  us  bon  voyage,  returned  to  wet  his  whistle 
in  our  honor,  never  doubting  that  we  were  "  Franzo- 
sitch correspondenta." 

That  night  we  stumbled  upon  the  only  genuine  ex- 
pression of  hospitality,  beside  our  hospitable  reception 
at  the  country  mansion  of  Count  Tolstoi,  that  revealed 
itself  to  us  on  the  journey,  until  I,  after  Sascha's  re- 
turn, got  among  the  Crimean  Tartars. 


S  USPICIO  US  PEA  SA  N  TS. 


l55 


At  the  village  of  Babayi  there  was  no  postayali  dvor, 
and  the  family  of  a  Rostoff  shipping  agent,  who  were 
spending  the  summer  there,  offered  us  the  hospitality 
of  their  datscha  for  the  night,  and  in  the  morning  in- 
sisted on  us  remaining  a  day  to  rest.  It  was  in  com- 
pany of  this  family  that  we  paid  our  visit  to  the  con- 
vent-monastery of  Karashavitch,  an  account  of  which 
is  found  in  later  pages.  In  the  summer  nearly  every 
Russian  city  family,  who  can  afford  the  luxury,  spend 
three  or  four  months  in  the  country.  Here  the  ladies 
pass  the  warm  period  of  summer  in  a  life  of  well-nigh 
ideal  lotus-eating.  They  take  their  meals  under  the 
trees  about  the  grounds,  and  indulge  their  love  of 
cigarettes  and  tea  to  the  last  M  papyros,"  and  the  last 
cup,  demanded  by  the  limits  of  utter  satisfaction. 
They  gossip  and  read  Zola,  play  cards,  and  take  long 
drives  in  the  family  linega. 

If  there  is  water  near,  they  indulge  frequently  in 
swimming  and  wading  in  it,  and  get  the  waterman  to 
row  them  about  in  his  leaking  wherry.  In  inland  Rus- 
sia, boats  always  seem  leaky,  vehicles  ramshackly, 
harnesses  old  and  patchy,  fences  broken,  hedges 
gappy,  and  indeed  well-nigh  everything  out  of  joint. 

An  interesting  member  of  this  hospitable  family  was 
a  young  man  who  wore  the  uniform  of  the  Imperial 
navy.  He  had,  to  some  extent,  worked  out  his  own 
career,  and  had  entered  upon  it  under  very  extraordi- 
nary circumstances.  When  he  applied  for  admission  to 
the  naval  academy,  it  was  to  discover  that  he  was  de- 
barred on  account  of  being,  according  to  the  rules,  one 
year  over  age.  Nothing  daunted,  he,  in  the  teeth  of 
all  persuasions  as  to  the  folly  of  so  doing,  wrote  a  letter 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


direct  to  the  Czar,  stating  his  case,  and  begging  that  an 
exception  might  be  made  in  his  favor.  To  the  astonish- 
ment of  everybody,  he  received,  fifteen  days  later,  an 
Imperial  document  which  secured  to  him  the  coveted 
permission  to  enter  the  academy. 

He  had  passed  his  examination  and  had  been  on 
several  cruises  in  and  about  the  Black,  Mediterranean, 
and  Red  Seas. 

This  young  officer  gave  the  writer  an  amusing  insight 
into  some  of  the  mental  conceptions  of  the  Russian 
sailors  and  younger  inferior  officers.  They  liked  the 
French  sailors  better  than  the  English,  he  said,  because 
the  French  sailors  kissed  them,  whereas  the  English 
sailors  were  always  punching  their  heads.  There  is,  it 
seems,  a  species  of  personal  assault  familiarly  known 
in  the  Russian  navy  as  being  "  boxed  by  a  John." 
English  sailors  are  the  "  Johns,"  and  boxing,  as  it  is 
"  understanded  of  the  Russian  sailors,"  appears  to  be 
less  of  a  scientific  operation  and  more  of  the  pummel- 
ing  order  of  assault  and  defense  than  is  permissible  by 
the  actual  rules  of  the  ring. 

Once — this  young  officer  and  protegi  of  the  Czar 
went  on  to  say — his  vessel  was  stationed  at  Alexandria, 
at  the  same  time  that  an  English  vessel  was  stationed 
there,  and  every  day,  sailors,  after  leave  ashore,  used  to 
come  aboard  with  blackened  eyes  and  broken  noses, 
all  evidences  of  having  been  "  boxed  by  the  Johns." 

My  informant  was  a  very  intelligent  young  Russian, 
but  in  common  with  a  good  many  Russians,  even  of 
fair  education,  deep  down  among  the  bottom  layers  of 
his  convictions  and  beliefs  were  scraps  of  fanaticism 
that  belong  to  the  days  of  Peter  the  Hermit,  and  seem 


SUSPICIOUS  FEASANTS. 


5  7 


startlingly  curious  in  these  days  of  well-nigh  universal 
enlightenment  among  the  Western  nations.  In  speak- 
ing of  the  different  navies,  he  seemed  thoroughly  con- 
scious of  the  superiority  of  the  British  navy  over  the 
Russian;  "  but,"  said  he,  "if  a  British  ship  were  to 
attempt  to  run  down  a  Russian  ship,  God  would  inter- 
fere on  behalf  of  the  Russians,  and  before  the  English 
ship  could  reach  them  it  would  go  to  the  bottom." 

One  can  understand  how  the  Russian  authorities 
manage  to  foster  such  beliefs  in  the  soldiers,  who  are 
never  allowed  to  come  under  any  outside  influence, 
but  it  was  something  of  a  revelation  to  the  writer,  that 
a  young  officer  who  had  knocked  about  in  foreign 
ports  should  still  seriously  entertain  such  fanatical 
ideas  as  this. 

We  were  now  fairly  in  Little  Russia,  and  at  Khar- 
koff  we  had  reached  the  end  of  the  broad  cliaussc, 
which  we  had  followed  all  the  way  from  Moscow. 
The  difficulty  of  finding  our  way  across  a  country 
threaded  with  small  roads  that  seemed  to  lead  to 
nowhere  in  particular,  during  our  first  day  out  from 
Babayi,  afforded  Sascha  exceptional  opportunities  for 
the  display  of  one  of  his  peculiarities  of  disposition. 
This  peculiarity  consisted  of  assuming  the  looks  and 
the  language  of  utter  despair,  on  the  smallest  possible 
provocation.  Any  difficulty  about  finding  the  road, 
getting  food  to  eat,  or  a  place  to  pass  the  night,  or  the 
likelihood  of  being  overhauled  by  the  police  about  our 
passports,  would  bring  from  Sascha  the  exclamation, 
"  Now  what  to  do  ?  "  with  such  a  tremendous  emphasis 
on  the  "  what,"  that  at  first  I  used  to  look  at  him  with 
astonishment,  supposing  him  to  be  in  a  frame  of  mind 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


akin  to  that  of  a  man  who  has  just  been  sentenced  to 
death.  After  no  end  of  these  "  now  what  to  do's," 
and  an  hour  or  so  of  floundering  about  in  a  sort  of 
morass,  we  eventually  struck  a  broad  and  well-defined 
road,  though  the  roads  were  now  nothing  more  than 
a  broad  swath  of  land  across  the  country,  preserved  by 
the  government  as  "  the  Czar's  highway." 

We  stayed  that  night  at  a  postayali-dvor,  where  we 
experienced  the  welcome  novelty  of  a  clean  white 
table-cloth,  and  clean  pillows  to  repose  our  heads  on, 
though  we  slept  out  of  the  house,  Sascha  in  the  stable, 
I  by  the  side  of  a  hay-rick  in  the  orchard.  The  secret 
of  the  clean  linen  was,  that  the  proprietor  of  the 
place  had  married  a  French  governess,  who  seemed  to 
have  taken  charge  of  the  management  by  preference,  as 
Frenchwomen  in  France  delight  in  keeping  shop. 
The  contrast  between  her  and  the  Russian  women 
belonging  to  similar  establishments  along  our  road, 
was  remarkably  striking.  The  women  were  lazier  and 
even  more  indifferent  about  getting  us  anything  to  eat, 
or  putting  themselves  out  of  the  way  in  any  shape  or 
manner  for  our  accommodation,  than  were  the  men. 
And  this  churlish  heedlessness  of  character  grew  to  be 
worse,  and  productive  of  more  and  more  discomfort  to 
us,  as  we  progressed  into  the  heart  of  Malo  Russia. 
Here,  we  were  among  a  people  who  could  scarcely 
be  got  to  give  us  a  civil  answer  in  reply  to  our 
questions  about  the  road.  The  moujiks  seemed 
particularly  morose  and  disinclined  to  show  us  any 
courtesy. 

At  Constantinograd,  a  small  town,  two  days'  ride 
south  of  Kharkoff,  we  were  getting  well  into  Malo 


SUSPICIOUS  PEASANTS. 


159 


Russia.  The  most  striking  feature  of  the  landscape 
were  big  fields  of  sunflowers. 

All  Russia  nibbles  sunflower  seeds  in  its  moments 
of  leisure.  Imagine  half  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States  carrying,  habitually,  a  supply  of  peanuts  around 
in  their  pockets  and  nibbling  them  continually,  and 
you  have  a  hardly  exaggerated  idea  of  the  ubiquitous 
part  played  by  the  sunflower  seed  in  Russian  life.  In 
the  circus,  in  the  theater,  in  the  offices,  the  shops,  the 
tea-houses,  the  city  streets,  the  village  door-stoop, 
men,  women,  girls  and  boys,  peasants,  nobles,  mer- 
chants, soldiers — everybody,  everywhere,  nibble  sun- 
flower seeds. 

It  is  to  supply  this  universal  taste  that  thousands  of 
acres  of  those  gorgeous  flowers  are  cultivated  on  the 
northern  border  of  Malo  Russia. 

People  who  have  only  seen  the  big  sunflower  as  a 
garden  ornament  can  have  but  a  dim  conception  of  the 
magnificent  sight  afforded  by  a  forty-acre  field  of  these 
gorgeous  yellow  blossoms.  I  first  saw  a  field  of  them 
in  the  morning,  when  every  big  round  golden  face,  with- 
out an  exception  in  all  the  myriads,  was  looking  toward 
the  east.  The  scene  was  striking,  and  suggested  a 
vast  multitude  of  floral  Aztecs  worshiping  the  morning 
sun.  Not  being  acquainted  with  the  habits  of  the 
sunflower  I  wondered  all  the  morning  whether  all 
those  worshipful  faces  would,  in  the  evening,  be  turned 
toward  the  west.  So  I  watched  other  fields  as  we  rode 
along,  and  learned,  what  every  other  reader  of  these 
pages  very  likely  knows  already,  that  the  sunflower 
always  turns  its  face  to  the  east. 

Here  the  mind  naturally  reverted  to  a  period  of  the 


160  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


past,  when  a  slim  gentleman  in  knee  breeches,  long 
hair,  and  with  a  big  sunflower  in  his  button-hole, 
emerged  from  the  fogs  of  London  to  create  a  passing 
furore  in  America  in  favor  of  the  floral  monarch  of  the 
Little  Russian  steppes. 

The  sunflower  crop  is  one  of  the  best  paying  in 
Russia.  A  good  crop  is  worth,  as  it  stands  in  the  field, 
100  rubles  a  dessiatine,  or  about  $25  an  acre.  The 
seeds  are  sold  by  the  farmer  for  one  and  a  half  to  two 
rubles  a  pood.  Then  the  merchants  retail  them  for 
four  rubles  a  pood,  and  at  about  every  street  crossing 
in  Russian  provincial  cities  are  stands  and  peddlers 
with  baskets,  selling  to  the  passers-by  the  product  of 
the  big  sunflower.  In  the  field  the  sunflowers  are 
sowed  in  rows  like  the  "  drilled  corn  "  of  the  Kansas 
farmer,  and,  like  corn,  are  cultivated  and  hilled  up 
with  shovel  plows. 

The  peasants  of  Little  Russia  seemed  to  be  even 
more  superstitious  than  the  moujiks  of  the  northern 
forests.  Once  we  halted  for  noon  at  a  little  village 
when  the  men  were  all  away  at  work.  The  fields  be- 
longing to  a  village  are  often  several  versts  away.  So 
uneventful  is  the  life  of  these  people  that  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  couple  of  strangers,  on  horseback,  dressed 
differently  from  themselves,  is  an  event  of  portentous 
possibilities. 

The  woman  from  whom  we  demanded  shelter  and 
feed  for  our  horses  crossed  herself  several  times  and 
turned  pale.  She  opened  the  gate,  however,  and 
brought  us  hay.  Afraid  to  approach  us,  she  placed 
the  hay  inside  the  gate  and  retreated.  We  went  into 
the  house  to  see  about  getting  a  samovar  to  make  tea. 


SUSPICIO  US  PEA  SA N TS. 


161 


The  poor  woman  was  quaking  with  fear,  but  was  too 
frightened  to  oppose  us  in  anything  we  might  wish  to 
do.  The  children  avoided  us  and  watched  us  furtively 
from  a  distance. 

On  entering  the  house  we  failed  to  cross  ourselves 
before  the  ikons,  or  holy  pictures,  in  the  corner.  This 
sacrilegious  omission  struck  new  terror  to  the  heart  of 
our  unwilling  hostess,  who  decided  then  and  there  that 
we  were  a  pair  of  antichrists,  come  to  "  steal  away 
the  souls  of  the  family."  She  crossed  herself  several 
times  whenever  we  spoke  to  her,  and  dispatched  one 
of  the  children  to  summon  a  neighbor. 

The  neighbor  arrived,  in  the  form  of  an  ancient  crone, 
who  was  probably  the  village  znakharka,  a  mysterious 
individual  to  the  villagers,  half  witch,  half  quack,  but, 
to  the  better  educated,  wholly  knave.  After  surveying 
us  awhile  and  talking  the  matter  over,  the  znakharka 
prescribed  a  piece  of  bread  wet  with  holy  water  as  the 
most  likely  thing  to  counteract  any  evil  designs  we 
might  have  on  the  household. 

On  January  5  every  year  a  quantity  of  water  is  con- 
veyed to  the  churches  of  Russia,  where  it  is  converted 
into  holy  water  by  the  blessings  of  the  priests.  Every 
Orthodox  Russian  carries  home  a  bottle  of  this  water 
and  keeps  it  in  the  house.  It  is  supposed  to  be  effi- 
cacious for  many  ailments,  both  bodily  and  spiritual. 

The  poor  woman  now  produced  her  precious  bottle 
of  holy  water,  and,  pouring  some  on  pieces  of  bread, 
gave  a  piece  to  each  of  the  children  and  to  a  young 
calf  that  was  in  the  room.  She  then  ate  a  piece  her- 
self. 

Her  terror  of  us  was  so  genuine  that  I  bade  Sascha 


1 6  2  THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUS  TA  NG. 


try  to  calm  her  fears.  He  produced  from  his  bosom 
the  miniature  ikon  that  had  been  given  him  by  his 
mother  at  the  beginning  of  the  journey,  and  assured 
the  woman  that  he  also  was  a  Christian.  For  a 
moment  her  suspicions  were  allayed,  and  for  very 
thankfulness  she  knelt  and  crossed  herself  many  times. 
Then  it  seemed  to  occur  to  her  that  Sascha's  ikon  was 
probably  worn  for  purposes  of  deception  ;  why  else 
had  he  not  crossed  himself  when  he  first  entered  the 
house  ? 

All  her  suspicions  were  intensified.  Tears  rolled 
down  her  cheeks.  In  vain  Sascha  tried  to  reassure  her. 
Her  house  would  burn  down  and  the  souls  of  the  fam- 
ily would  wither  away  as  a  consequence  of  our  visit. 
When  we  departed  she  was  afraid  to  take  money  di- 
rectly from  my  hand,  but  motioned  us  to  lay  it  down. 

Though  less  superstitious  than  the  women,  the  men 
regarded  us  with  a  different  order  of  suspicion.  To 
some  we  were  mysterious  strangers,  spying  out  the 
country;  toothers  we  were  secret  police.  In  either 
case  we  had  sinister  designs  on  the  people. 

The  most  common  form  of  suspicion  was  that  we 
were  secretly  engaged  in  numbering  the  people  and 
assessing  the  property  for  the  purpose  of  increasing 
the  taxes.  An  attempt  to  photograph  a  house  pro- 
duced considerable  excitement.  To  the  peasants  this 
was  proof  positive  that  aggressive  measures,  in  the 
nature  of  heavier  taxes,  would  be  the  outcome  of  our 
visit.  The  peasants  themselves  were  as  chary  of  the 
Kamaret  as  the  most  timid  and  suspicious  of  the  East 
African  tribes  which  the  writer  met  the  summer 
before. 


S  [JSP  I  CIO  US  PEA  SA  NTS. 


Their  timidity  and  suspicions,  it  is  fair  to  say,  were 
not  always  the  result  of  superstition.  In  some  cases 
superstition  and  ignorance  formed  the  groundwork  of 
their  objections,  but  their  chief  fears  were  that  we 
were  agents  of  the  government.  In  one  small  village 
the  people  were  so  convinced  that  we  were  government 
spies  secretly  assessing  their  property  that  a  delegation 
of  elders  waited  on  us  and  naively  offered  to  pay  us 
for  undervaluing  their  belongings.  The  peasants  are 
always  in  dread  of  some  new  scheme  of  squeezing 
more  money  out  of  their  pockets.  The  traveler  finds 
among  these  people  the  same  dread  of  government 
officials  as  in  Turkey,  Persia,  China,  and  other  countries 
where  the  officials  are  notoriously  corrupt,  though  not 
in  the  same  degree.  The  evidence  of  bad  government, 
which  finds  expression  in  the  servile  prostitution  of 
the  peasantry  before  the  minions  of  the  governing 
power,  is  seen  to  the  best  advantage  in  the  Armenian 
villages  of  Asiatic  Turkey.  The  arrival  of  a  Turkish 
officer  in  a  village  creates  as  much  consternation 
among  the  people  as  if  they  were  rats  in  a  pit,  and  the 
man  in  uniform  the  terrier,  who  is  heavily  backed  to 
kill  them  all  in  a  certain  length  of  time.  Nine  tenths 
of  them  are  invisible  from  the  time  of  his  arrival  to  his 
departure  ;  the  other  tenth  hover  about,  watchful  and 
alert,  to  anticipate  his  every  wish.  The  state  of  affairs 
in  Russia  is  a  decided  improvement  on  this  ;  but  when 
the  worst  fears  of  the  peasants  take  the  form  of  sus- 
picion that  the  stranger  who  comes  among  them  is 
an  officer  of  the  government,  something  evidently  is 
wrong. 

One  sees  less  of  the  military  element  in  provincial 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Russia  than  might  have  been  expected.  There  are 
camps  at  every  good-sized  town — a  tented  field — for  in 
Russia  the  army  goes  into  camp  all  summer.  But  gar- 
rison towns  are  few  and  far  apart,  and  it  is  only  by 
bearing  in  mind  the  vast  extent  of  Russian  territory 
that  one  can  come  to  accept  as  probable  the  numerical 
claims  of  its  army. 

It  is  curious  to  see  soldiers  in  uniform  working  in 
the  harvest  fields  or  mending  the  roads.  The  pay  of 
the  Russian  soldier  is  only  seventy  kopecks  a  month — 
less  than  Uncle  Sam  pays  his  boys  in  blue  per  day. 
As  an  offset,  however,  the  Russians  are  permitted  to 
hire  out  as  laborers  or  artisans — anything  they  can  find 
to  do.  In  the  cities,  the  soldiers  of  the  garrison 
usually  have  the  preference  over  others  as  supers  in 
the  theaters,  and  among  them  are  often  found  amateur 
actors,  singers,  and  musicians  of  considerable  talent. 
In  the  provinces  they  work  at  harvesting,  plowing, 
ditch-digging,  or  anything  the  large  landed  proprietors 
can  find  for  them  to  do. 

In  every  village  are  young  men  who  have  returned 
home  from  their  three  years'  military  duty.  The  Rus- 
sian peasant  dreads  going  into  the  army,  but  when  he 
returns  is  immensely  proud  of  his  service.  He  then 
considers  himself  far  superior  to  those  whom  three 
years  before  he  would  have  given  an  ear  to  change 
places  with  in  order  to  remain  at  home.  The  secret  of 
his  exaltation  is  that  while  in  the  barracks  he  has 
received  a  rudimentary  education,  and  knows  a  thing 
or  two  more  than  the  rustics  about  him. 

The  military  burden,  apart  from  the  expenses  of 
keeping  up  the  army,  seems  to  sit  lightly  enough  on 


SUSPICIOUS  PEASANTS. 


>65 


the  population.  Neither  the  eldest  son,  nor  a  son  on 
whom  depends  the  support  of  his  parents,  is  required 
to  serve.  The  young  man  who  can  pass  a  certain 
examination  is  required  to  serve  only  one  year  in  the 
regular  army  as  a  volunteer  recruit. 

Between  Kharkoff  and  Ekaterinoslav,  the  crops  w  ere 
a  failure.  From  April  I  to  June  I  there  bad  been  no 
rain,  and  all  along  our  way  w  ere  fields  of  grain  too  poor 
to  repay  the  expense  of  cutting.  The  country  seemed 
to  be  farmed  mostly  by  large  proprietors;  villages  were 
becoming  scarce  and  the  mansions  of  big  land-owners 
became  a  prominent  feature  of  the  landscape.  Jews 
and  sectarians  began  to  be  more  prominent  in  the  towns. 

At  Constantinograd,  the  proprietor  of  thetraktir  w  as 
a  Jew,  and  on  the  wall  of  our  room  hung  a  steel  por- 
trait of  Sir  Moses  Montefiore.  Tin's  portrait  of  Sir 
Moses  is  to  be  seen  on  the  wall  of  every  Jewish  family 
in  Russia,  who  can  afford  the  luxury  of  a  picture. 

It  was  not  always  easy  to  distinguish,  readily,  Hebrew 
proprietors  by  their  features,  in  Malo  Russia,  for  many 
of  the  Little  Russians  themselves  are  dark  and  Isi  ael- 
itish  in  appearance  ;  but  the  absence  of  ikons  and  the 
presence  of  the  portrait  of  Sir  Moses  Montefiore  in  the 
room  would  immediately  put  us  right. 

However  it  may  be  with  the  Jews  of  Russia  as  a  body, 
the  writer  is  bound  to  do  them  the  justice  of  recording 
the  fact  that  such  few  specimens  as  I  came  in  contact 
with,  chiefly  keepers  of  village  traktirs,  were  a  decided 
improvement,  as  regards  cleanliness  and  willingness  to 
put  themselves  to  trouble,  on  the  Orthodox  traktir-keep- 
ers.  And  only  in  one  instance  did  it  seem  to  me  that 
they  were  in  the  slighte  st  degree  ''smaller"  and  more 


i66 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  OAT  A  MUSTANG. 


grasping  as  to  kopecks.  As  between  the  two,  though 
both  were  decidedly  picayunish  in  their  dealings  from 
a  Western  point  of  view,  if  the  writer  ever  got  satis- 
factory accommodation  in  return  for  the  charges  made, 
it  would  be  from  the  Jew  proprietors  rather  than  the 
Russian.  The  Jews  were,  certainly,  shrewder,  but 
not  a  whit  more  grasping  and  inclined  to  petty  exac- 
tions; and  the  superior  spirit  of  enterprise  was  at  least 
productive  of  a  decent  place  to  sleep  and  something 
beyond  weak  tea  and  ancient  hard  boiled  eggs  to  eat. 

They  were  suspicious,  however;  even  more  so  than 
the  moujiks.  At  this  time  the  Russian  government 
was  giving  one  of  its  periodical  twists  to  the  Jewish 
screw,  and  these  people  were  comically  suspicious  that 
we  might  be  secret  agents  of  the  government.  Some- 
times this  continual  suspicion  of  both  Russians  and 
Jews  would  grow  irksome,  and  the  annoyance  of  it 
would  be  aggravated  by  the  boorish  reluctance  of  a 
Russian  traktir-keeper  to  move  in  the  matter  of  satisfy- 
ing the  cravings  of  a  traveler's  hunger ;  and  the  hunger 
and  the  annoyance  would  give  rise  to  vengeful  imagin- 
ings, in  which  the  Jews  were  permitted  to  ruin  all  the 
moujiks,  and  the  moujiks  then  permitted  to  rise  up 
and  massacre  all  the  Jews!  The  condition  of  a  man's 
stomach  has  more  to  do  with  his  frame  of  mind  than 
many  people  who  have  never  known  semi-starvation 
are  aware  of. 

Near  Pereschepinsk  men  were  ducking,  in  a  marshy 
tract  of  country,  with  old  Catherine  II  match-locks, 
and  huge  flint-locks  tied  to  stakes  driven  in  the  mud. 
Others  were  ambushed  among  the  reeds  and  flags  with 
flails,  with  which  they  smote  the  unwary  quackers  with 


S  USPICIO  US  PEA  SA  N  TS. 


167 


unerring  blows,  born  of  long  practice.  Wild  ducks 
were  offered  us  at  seven  kopecks  apiece  ;  but  it  was 
useless  to  attempt  to  get  one  cooked.  By  this  time  I 
was  well-nigh  beginning  to  believe  that  the  real  secret 
of  why  the  lower  orders  of  Russia  live  on  rye  bread, 
salted  cucumbers,  and  stewed  buckwheat,  is  because 
they  are  too  abominably  lazy  and  shiftless  to  cook 
anything  else. 

All  through  this  region  of  drouth,  rye  bread  seemed 
to  be.abundant  and  cheap,  w  hile  oats  or  horse-feed  of 
any  kind  was  difficult  to  obtain.  It  was  the  famous 
"  black  earth  zone,"  where  wheat  and  rye  seemed  to 
have  driven  out  oats.  At  first  Texas  turned  up  his 
snip  nose  disdainfully  at  rye  bread,  and  looked  around 
with  an  almost  human  look  of  inquiry  for  oats,  but  he 
eventually  came  down  to  it,  merely  stipulating  that 
the  first  couple  of  feeds  be  lightly  sprinkled  with 
salt. 

At  one  of  the  postayali  (Ivors  we  found  the  proprietor 
a  comparatively  rich  land-owner,  a  young  man  whose 
father  had  left  him  500  dessiatincs  of  land.  He  and 
his  better  half  were  about  the  worthiest  couple  we  had 
happened  across  on  the  road,  for  traktir-keepers.  Our 
bed  this  night  was  in  the  hay-loft,  and  an  hour  or  so 
after  I  had  returned,  Sascha  made  his  appearance  in 
such  a  jovial  frame  of  mind  that  I  decided  he  and  the 
host  must  have  been  drinking  one  another's  health 
with  something  more  of  ardor  than  discretion.  Inquir- 
ing the  cause  of  his  hilarity,  however,  I  learned  to  my 
astonishment  that  it  was  all  because  our  genial  host 
had  rewarded  him  for  the  yarns  he  had  been  spinning 
about  our  experiences  on  the  ride,  by  using  the  en- 


i68 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


dearing  "  thou,"  instead  of  the  more  formal  "you,"  in 
talking  to  him. 

At  Novo-Moskovski  we  once  again  came  under  the 
meddlesome  suspicions  of  the  police.  The  "  lion  "  of 
Novo-Moskovski  was  a  wooden  church  with  nine  small 
domes,  which  had  been  put  together  without  using  a 
single  nail.  Everything  was  done  by  dovetailing  and 
with  wooden  pins.  We  were  looking  at  this  church, 
after  having  put  up  our  horses  at  the  postayali  dvor, 
when  up  stepped  a  police  officer  and  demanded  to  see 
our  passports.  They  were,  of  course,  declared  to  be 
"  irregular."  Mine  was  not  in  language  that  they 
could  understand,  and  Sascha's  house-that-Jack-built 
document  was  no  passport  at  all. 

Though  an  ispravnik,  and  several  "  niks  "  higher  in 
the  scale  of  the  Tchin  than  our  useful  friends  the  uriad- 
niks,  this  official  was  afraid  to  peep  into  the  little 
view-finder  of  my  Kamaret,  and  he  was  thoroughly 
mystified  by  the  pictures  in  a  copy  of  an  American 
magazine,  which  he  discovered  in  my  saddle-bags. 
His  suspicions  of  this  magazine  were,  indeed,  so  remark- 
ably comical  that  it  was  with  great  difficulty  I  could 
keep  my  countenance.  He  demanded  a  minute  ex- 
planation of  several  plans  of  Japanese  theaters  that  it 
contained,  evidently  suspecting  that  they  might  be 
plans  of  Russian  forts. 

Another  of  his  suspicions  was  directed  at  a  Russian 
cap  which  the  writer  had  found  preferable  in  the  hot 
sun,  to  the  one  I  might  otherwise  have  worn.  The 
fact  that  a  foreigner  was  wearing  a  Russian  cap  smote 
him  as  an  additional  reason  why  we  should  be 
regarded  with  suspicion,  and  subjected  to  annoyance. 


SUSPICIOUS  PEASANTS. 


169 


After  detaining  us  till  eleven  o'clock  next  morning, 
they  announced  that  the  chief  objection  to  allowing 
us  to  proceed  on  our  way  was  Sascha's  house-that-Jack- 
built  paper.  This  was  a  plain  enough  bid  for  a 
modest  contribution  to  the  official  pocket,  and  as  the 
quickest  way  of  settling  the  difficulty  we  applied  for  a 
paper  that  would  enable  him  to  avoid  any  further  in- 
terference. The  result  was  that  we  obtained  another 
responsibility-dodging  document,  stating  that  Sascha 
had  appeared  to  this  police-station  with  a  paper  which 
he  said  he  had  obtained  at  Kurskh,  where  he  had  said 
that  he  had  lost  his  passport,  which  he  said  he  had 
obtained  in  Moscow,  in  which  city  he  had  said  he  re- 
sided, and  in  which  city  lie  had  said  he  received  his 
education,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.  (!) 


CHAPTER  XI. 


NUNS  AND  CONVENTS. 

BEFORE  continuing  our  ride  toward  the  Crimea, 
let  me  ask  the  reader  to  retrace  a  few  versts  of  our 
road,  and  visit  a  Russian  convent. 

A  few  miles  south  of  Kharkoff  is  the  convent 
monastery  of  Karashavitch.  It  occupies  a  picturesque 
knoll  overlooking  the  rich  bottom  lands  of  the  River 
Donetz,  and  contains  quarters  for  both  monks  and 
nuns.  Sascha  and  I  were  enjoying  the  hospitality  of 
the  Rostoff  merchant's  family  before  spoken  of,  and  it 
being  Sunday  we  paid  a  visit  to  the  monastery. 

Monks  I  had  visited  in  the  Alexandra  Nevski  Mon- 
astery at  St.  Petersburg,  and  the  Nicholai  Oograshinski 
Monastery  near  Moscow,  but  this  was  the  first  oppor- 
tunity that  had  presented  itself  of  seeing  something  of 
the  manners  and  custom  of  the "  brides  of  Christ  "  in 
holy  Russia.  In  most  countries  it  is  difficult  for  a 
male  biped  to  gain  admittance  into  a  convent,  but  the 
holy  Sisters  of  Russia  are  extremely  liberal  iri  their 
ideas;  and  the  monastery  of  Karashavitch,  the  grounds 
being  occupied  in  part  by  monks,  was  as  easy  of  access 
to  one  sex  as  to  the  other.  Its  very  name,  Karasha, 
in  fact,  signifies  literally,  "  all  right." 

We  timed  our  visit  so  as  to  see  the  nuns  at  dinner, 
which  we  were  told  would  be  the  most  interesting 
event  of  the  day.  We  arrived,  however,  in  time  for 
the  morning  service  in  the  church  as  well,    A  visit  to 

170 


NUNS  AND  CONVENTS. 


171 


a  Russian  monastery  carries  the  visitor  back  at  once  to 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  no  sooner  were  we  inside  the 
irregular  high  wall  that  crowned  the  summit  of  the 
knoll  than  our  eyes  were  riveted  on  a  scene  worthy  of 
"  The  Hunchback  of  Notre  Dame." 

A  nun  in  black  robes  and  black  velvet  helmet-shaped 
head-dress  was  up  in  the  open  belfry  of  the  church 
ringing  a  clamorous  peal  of  three  bells,  by  means  of 
ropes  manipulated  in  a  curiously  skillful  manner,  with 
both  hands  and  one  foot.  One  of  the  bells  was  a  regu- 
lar "  Big  Ben,"  with  a  funereal  boom  that  must  have 
been  the  terror  of  aerial  demons  for  twenty  miles 
around  ;  and  in  the  task  of  putting  them  to  flight  this 
bell  was  ably  seconded  by  its  lesser,  but  by  no  means 
small  brother,  the  middle  bell  of  the  peal.  The  little 
bell  joined  in  with  a  quickening  "  tinkle-tinkle-tinkle," 
voicing  its  imperative  mandates  half  a  dozen  times  to 
Big  Ben's  one,  as  though,  in  the  work  of  routing  the 
enemy,  it  was  determined  not  to  be  outdone  by  the 
others.  Lucifer  himself  would  have  stood  no  chance 
against  all  three,  and  even  had  he  braved  the  bells,  a 
glance  at  the  weird-looking  figure  in  the  belfry  would 
have  convinced  him  of  the  folly  of  bravado  in  the  pres- 
ence of  so  skillful  and  vigorous  a  holy  Sister. 

The  black  figure  against  the  blue  summer  sky,  with 
black-draped  arms  outstretched  and  one  foot  working 
a  treadle,  the  whole  body  bending  and  swaying  in 
muscular  unison  with  the  curious  medley  of  the  bells — 
could  that  possibly  be  a  woman  ?  A  woman  it  was, 
however — one  of  the  older  nuns  ;  and  her  performance 
in  this  belfry  was  worth  traveling  half  across  Russia  to 
see. 


1 7  2  THRO  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUS  TA  NG. 


In  response  to  her  summons,  the  shaded  walks  of  the 
monastery  grounds  suddenly  became  alive  with  black- 
robed  figures.  They  were  the  nuns  and  novices  flock- 
ing to  church  from  all  directions,  singly  and  by  twos. 
The  belts  of  the  black  frocks  were  well  up  between  the 
shoulders,  and  worldly  gewgaws,  save  black  ribbon, 
had  been  rigorously  eschewed. 

Only  the  head-dress  could  be  called  fantastic.  The 
older  Sisters  wore  close-fitting  helmets  of  black  velvet 
and  the  novices  a  tall,  pointed  head-dress  of  the  same 
material,  in  shape  not  unlike  that  of  the  Pomeranian 
Guards  of  Prussia.  A  pardonable  concession  to  the 
world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil  was  permitted  in  the 
display  of  remarkably  fine  lengths  of  hair.  Russian 
women  have  their  fair  share  of  this  chief  glory  of  the 
sex,  and  the  young  novices  were  allowed  to  indulge  in 
single  braids  which,  like  a  Chinaman's  queue,  often 
fell  below  the  waist,  and  were  tied  at  the  end  with  little 
bows  of  black  ribbon. 

There  was  nothing  noteworthy  in  the  service  except 
the  singing.  Imagine  the  offices  of  the  priests  in  a 
Roman  Catholic  church  performed  by  the  older  nuns, 
and  you  have  a  sufficiently  clear  idea  of  this  service. 

But  the  singing  was  soft  and  sweet  and  sad, — the 
plaintive  melody  that  characterizes  the  popular  songs 
of  the  Russian  people,  chastened  and  refined. 

As  before  stated,  most  Russian  popular  songs  are 
tales  of  sorrow,  bewailing  the  loss  of  a  sweetheart,  or 
the  death  of  cherished  hallucinations,  and  their  music 
is  a  melancholy  plaint.  "  John  Brown's  Body,"  in 
Russia,  instead  of  a  humorous  production,  would  have 
been  a  veritable  dirge.    In  sacred  music  it  is  the  same. 


NUNS  AND  CONVENTS. 


*73 


While  our  churches  ring  with  songs  of  triumph,  praise, 
and  glory,  the  churches  of  Russia  are  rilled  with  sweet, 
sad  plaints  for  mercy. 

By  purchasing  a  small  ikon  from  a  grateful  little  old 
Sister  who  kept  a  stall  for  the  sale  of  holy  pictures,"we 
gained  admittance  to  the  dining-room  to  see  the  nuns 
at  dinner. 

They  filed  in  from  church  or  from  their  cells,  greet- 
ing each  other  affectionately  as  they  came  into  the 
room,  and  stood  up  in  rows  along  the  walls.  While 
waiting  the  dinner  hour  they  chatted  and  smiled,  and 
laid  their  heads  together,  and  formed  little  gossiping 
groups,  the  queer  head-dresses  bobbing  and  turning, 
bowing  and  nodding.  The  novices  had  donned  white 
aprons. 

The  table  being  ready,  the  nuns  clustered  together, 
and,  turning  their  faces  toward  Jerusalem,  sang  a 
paternoster,  afterward  taking  their  seats.  Four  nuns 
had  to  eat  from  one  plate  and  drink  from  one  glass. 
Each  had  a  square  piece  of  black  bread,  a  tiny  cellar  of 
salt,  and  a  wooden  spoon.  Decanters  of  kwass  were 
on  the  tables,  and  seemed  to  be  in  more  demand  than 
anything  else.  Whether  they  were  thirsty  after  their 
singing,  or  whether  the  kwass  was  irresistible  in  itself, 
those  who  got  a  first  chance  at  the  decanters  gave 
small  heed  to  the  rights  of  their  sisters,  many  of  whom 
got  next  to  none.  Kwass,  black  bread  and  salt,  cab- 
bage soup,  and  a  porridge  of  grain  was  the  meal.  Four 
of  the  plumpest  of  the  young  novices  were  waiters, 
while  others  handed  in  the  bowls  and  dishes  at  a  door. 
Throughout  the  meal  one  of  the  nuns  stood  and  read 
aloud  from  the  lives  of  the  Saints,  while  another  also 


174 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


stood  in  a  corner  as  a  punishment  for  some  slight 
breach  of  discipline. 

It  was  all  very  interesting,  and  when,  on  returning 
to  St.  Petersburg  after  the  ride  to  the  Crimea,  a  lady 
invited  me  to  accompany  her  to  one  of  the  largest  con- 
vents in  Russia,  I  readily  accepted.  This  was  the 
Monastery  of  Novodaiveetsa,  in  the  eastern  suburbs  of 
St.  Petersburg.  This  visit  turned  out  to  be  even  more 
interesting  than  the  other. 

We  took  with  us  a  little  tea-set  to  present  to  a  nun 
with  whom  my  friend  was  acquainted,  and  who,  it  was 
believed,  would  show  us  over  the  place.  A  ninth-day 
service  for  a  young  lady  who  had  been  buried  in  the 
convent  cemetery  was  going  on  in  the  church  when  we 
arrived.  There  was  the  same  plaintive  singing  by  a 
choir  of  novices  as  at  Karashavitch,  only,  this  being 
a  mass  for  the  dead,  two  patriarchal  priests  performed 
the  rites.  The  head-dresses  were  of  a  hussar,  rather 
than  Pomeranian  Guard  pattern,  and  veils  of  black 
crape  flowed  to  the  ground.  In  one  corner,  facing  the 
choristers,  was  an  old  lady  weeping  bitterly,  the  mother 
of  the  young  woman  for  whom  the  service  was  held. 
One  of  the  nuns  presented  her  with  a  loaf  of  holy  bread. 

Sister  Salavioff,  recognizing  my  companion,  came 
over  and  kissed  her  several  times,  first  on  one  cheek, 
then  on  the  other,  and  saluted  the  author  with  a  bow. 
Hers  was  a  pale  face,  and,  save  for  a  roguish  twinkle 
in  a  pair  of  remarkably  lively  black  eyes,  might  have 
served  as  a  model  for  a  typical  holy  Sister.  After  the 
service  it  was  her  duty  to  extinguish  the  candles,  when 
she  said  she  would  show  us  everything  worth  seeing  in 
the  convent. 


NUNS  AND  CONVENTS. 


175 


We  followed  the  priests  and  the  choristers  to  the  grave 
of  the  dead  girl  to  see  the  services  there.  The  grave 
was  hidden  beneath  piles  of  flowers  and  wreaths,  and 
the  priests  swung  censers  over  it  as  they  led  the 
services. 

"God  have  mercy  upon  our  sister's  soul,"  wailed  the 
nuns  in  the  same  melancholy  yet  melodious  strain. 

The  poor  mother  and  a  small  gathering  of  friends 
stood  at  one  end  of  the  mound  of  fading  flowers,  and 
wept  and  made  signs  of  the  Cross.  The  services  being 
ended,  a  big  dish  of  boiled  rice  was  produced  and  set 
on  the  grave.  Everybody  ate  a  spoonful,  and  the  rest 
was  scattered  over  the  grave, 

This  cemetery  was  the  most  beautifully  kept  and 
interesting  I  had  ever  seen.  Sister  Salavioff  showed 
us  over  it,  explaining  everything.  In  their  family  life 
the  Russians  are  an  affectionate  people,  and  they  do 
their  best  to  follow  their  departed  friends  into  the 
spirit  world.  "  They  think  more  of  the  dead  than  of  the 
living,"  said  my  companion. 

And,  indeed,  this  convent  cemetery  was  to  me  a  reve- 
lation of  how  far  superstition  and  religion  combined 
may  carry  people  in  their  striving  to  penetrate  the 
mysteries  of  the  future  life  and  link  them  with  the 
present.  The  ambition  of  every  Russian  is  to  be  buried 
in  a  monastery,  and  those  who  are  rich  enough  invari- 
ably find  a  resting  place  within  this  sacred  boundary. 

Rich  merchants,  who  are,  in  Russia,  often  as  igno- 
rant and  superstitious  as  the  peasants,  leave  large  sums 
of  money  to  the  monasteries  in  return  for  choice  burial 
plots  and  future  masses  for  the  welfare  of  their  souls. 

A  grave  costs  from  500  to  IOOO  rubles  for  positions 


176 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


near  the  cemetery  church,  down  to  50  rubles  for  remote 
situations  near  the  outer  wall. 

Over  many  of  the  graves  are  built  beautiful  little 
houses,  chiefly  of  glass  and  ornamental  marble  or  iron, 
like  small  summer-houses.  These  houses  are  cosily  fur- 
nished with  rugs,  tables,  chairs,  etc.,  and  the  windows 
are  embellished  with  fancy  curtains  or  made  of  stained 
glass.  Photographs  of  the  dead  hang  on  the  rear  wall, 
which  is  not  of  glass,  and  sometimes  busts  stand  on  a 
shelf.  Easter  eggs,  religious  books,  and  other  memen- 
toes of  the  departed  are  on  the  table.  Pots  of  flowers 
stand  around,  and  ikons  and  holy  pictures  hang  up  or 
stand  on  a  shelf  as  in  the  houses  of  the  living. 

In  one  of  these  houses  sat  a  woman  reading  a  book, 
and  with  a  samovar  of  tea  on  the  table.  u  A  disconso- 
late widow,"  explained  Sister  Salavioff,  "  who  comes 
twice  a  week  to  spend  the  day  in  reading  or  knitting, 
and  drinking  tea  in  the  company  of  her  departed  hus- 
band." 

In  another  house  were  a  family  party,  also  with  a 
samovar,  and  luncheon  brought  in  a  basket.  Some  of 
the  family  were  smoking  cigarettes.  They,  too,  were 
enjoying  the  company  of  such  members  of  the  family 
as  had  "  gone  before." 

These  houses  over  the  graves  are  peculiarly  inter- 
esting, as  being  a  distinct  survival  of  heathenism, 
which  the  Russians  have  clung  to  and  shaped  to  their 
conceptions  of  the  Christian  religion.  The  pagan 
Slavs  used  to  build  wooden  huts  on  the  graves  of  their 
ancestors  for  the  accommodation  of  the  spirit  when  it 
chose  to  return  to  earth  and  visit  the  body,  and  also 
for  the  use  of  the  relatives  when  they  came  to  mourn 


NUNS  AND  CONVENTS. 


177 


on  the  grave.  In  spite  of  ecclesiastical  prohibition, 
the  peasants  of  remote  districts  still  erect  log  huts  on 
the  graves,  and  in  the  case  of  those  who  have  rubles 
to  bestow  on  the  monks  and  nuns,  full  liberty  to  indulge 
this  ancient  custom  seems  to  be  given. 

Eating  from  a  dish  of  rice  around  the  grave,  and 
scattering  the  remainder  over  it,  is  likewise  a  relic  of 
paganism.  The  heathen  Slavs  used  to  feast  and  revel 
on  the  graves  of  the  newly  buried  and  leave  portions 
of  the  food  for  the  use  of  the  departed.  In  modern 
Russia  the  feasting  is  observed  at  home  after  the  visit 
to  the  grave,  but  the  formal  eating  and  scattering  of 
the  rice  is  decidedly  pagan.  Whether  the  old  heathen 
builders  of  the  wooden  huts  would  have  thought  the 
structures  in  the  Novodaiveetsa  monastery  a  sign  of 
degeneracy,  as  they  certainly  would  the  substitution  of 
the  dish  of  rice  for  the  old  feasting  and  carousing,  is  a 
speculation.  But  there  is  a  wide  difference,  indeed. 
Many  of  the  houses  cost  from  10,000  to  15,000  rubles, 
and  the  finest  one  in  the  cemetery  cost  30,000  rubles. 

Our  guide  explained  further  that  one  of  the  smaller 
sources  of  the  convent's  revenue  was  the  furnishing  of 
samovars  of  hot  water  to  relatives  who  come  to  drink 
tea  with  the  dead  in  these  houses.  Main-  of  the 
houses  were  occupied  ever)r  day  in  the  year  for  a  few- 
hours  by  one  or  another  of  the  relatives,  it  being 
looked  upon  as  a  special  mark  of  love  to  the  departed 
to  visit  and  drink  tea  with  them  every  day.  These 
visitors  bring  tea  and  sugar,  but  find  it  more  conven- 
ient to  obtain  samovars  of  hot  water  from  the  nuns. 

On  saints'  days,  name  days,  etc.,  candles  are  burned, 
and  tapers  in  cups  of  holy  oil  are  always  burning.  The 


i78 


Through  Russia  on  a  mustang. 


nuns  are  paid  from  ten  rubles  a  year  upward  for  water- 
ing the  flowers  and  keeping  each  grave  trim. 

The  shafts  over  such  graves  as  had  no  house  were 
often  quite  as  interesting.  A  photograph  or  crayon 
portrait  of  the  deceased  is  usually  set  in  the  monu- 
ment and  covered  with  glass.  Or  there  is  a  bust  or 
small  statuette,  the  latter  being  used  chiefly  in  the  case 
of  infants.  The  monument  of  a  celebrated  actress 
was  pointed  out,  whose  life-size  bust  in  bronze  rested 
on  the  top,  together  with  a  bronze  mask  and  harp — 
heathenism  again,  and  a  relic  of  the  days  when  the 
arms  and  horse  of  the  dead  warrior  were  buried  with 
him,  and  domestic  implements  were  interred  with  his 
wife  or  daughter. 

The  weirdest  thing  in  the  cemetery  was  a  grave  that 
is  simply  a.  glass  house,  containing  a  vault  or  cellar 
with  a  trap-door  and  steps  leading  down  into  it.  The 
Sister  told  us  its  story.  After  twenty  years  of  married 
life,  during  which  their  prayers  for  offspring  had  been 
unanswered,  a  couple  were  finally  presented  with  a 
daughter  in.  1873.  Three  years  later  the  new-comer 
died.  The  unhappy  parents  had  the  body  embalmed 
and  placed  in  a  cofrin  with  a  glass  opening  above  the 
face.  The  tomb  in  question  was  built  and  the  cofrin 
deposited  in  the  crypt.  Every  day  for  fourteen  years 
past  the  mother  had  visited  the  house,  descended 
through  the  trap-door,  and  spent  some  time  looking 
into  the  face  of  the  little  one  through  the  glass.  No 
change  had  taken  place  in  its  appearance.  This  last 
item  was  told  us  with  a  ring  of  honest  pride  in  her 
voice,  as  indicating  the  peculiar  fitness  of  the  convent 
cemetery  as  a  place  of  burial. 


NUNS  AND  CONVENTS. 


179 


Afterward  we  went  to  the  convent,  following  our 
guide  and  chaperon  along  a  dim  corridor,  that  be- 
trayed a  number  of  little  doors  in  the  walls.  Before 
one  of  these  doors  we  halted,  while  it  was  unlocked. 

"  Domois  pazhalt  gospodin,"  said  the  guide,  after 
my  friend  had  entered,  and  accepting  the  invitation 
we  found  ourselves  in  a  nun's  cell.  It  was  a  cellar- 
like  room,  about  eight  paces  by  four,  divided  into  two 
compartments  by  a  screen.  Small  grated  windows 
were  on  a  level  with  the  ground  without,  and  the  sills 
contained  pots  of  flowers.  The  floor  was  innocent  of 
carpet,  but  was  polished  as  if  with  wax. 

The  sitting-room  contained  a  plain  chest  of  drawers, 
chairs,  table,  and  a  little  clock.  A  small  brass  samovar, 
which  we  were  told  was  thirty  years  old,  stood  on  the 
table,  and  on  the  wall  hung  small  photographs  of  the 
Mother  Abbotess,  a  couple  of  priests,  and  relatives  of 
the  outer  world,  besides  the  inevitable  ikons  and  holy 
prints.  A  hospitable  offer  to  steam  up  the  samovar 
was  declined  on  the  score  of  time  and  trouble.  The 
smaller  compartment  contained  a  narrow  bed,  with 
snowy  sheets  and  a  thick,  comfortable  mattress,  stuffed 
with  hemp,  a  chair,  and  a  few  other  necessaries.  The 
whole  was  a  snug  enough  retreat. 

We  next  visited  the  department  where  the  convent 
kwass  is  brewed.  This  was  in  charge  of  a  lively  old 
nun  who,  in  the  outer  world  had  been  a  countess,  and 
showed  good  breeding  in  every  movement.  She  wore 
a  working  suit  of  rusty  black  and  devoted  her  time  to 
brewing  kwass  for  the  rest  of  the  nuns.  The  room 
was  full  of  big  iron  pots,  tubs  and  sacks  of  rye  flour, 
and  was  partly  occupied  by  a  big  oven  for  baking  and 


i8o 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


drying  the  bread  used  in  the  process  of  kwass-making. 
Kwass  and  sugar  for  sweetening  it  were  brought  for 
us,  and  excellent  black  bread.  The  erstwhile  Countess 
was  so  pleased  at  the  praise  bestowed  on  her  rye  bread 
that  she  insisted  on  wrapping  several  slices  of  it  up  in 
a  paper  for  us  to  take  home. 

Everything  consumed  by  the  nuns  is,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, the  work  of  their  own  hands.  They  aim  to  pro- 
vide for  all  their  own  wants  as  well  as  to  make  things 
for  sale.  We  visited  the  shoemaking  room,  where 
several  Sisters  were  busy  as  bees  with  lasts,  hammers, 
awls,  wax,  and  thread  ;  and  they  brought  out  for  our 
inspection  several  pairs  of  gaiters  which  had  just  been 
finished.  Shoemaking  is  as  much  beyond  a  woman  as 
sharpening  a  pencil  is,  and  I  must  confess  that  my 
admiration  of  these  elastic  sides  was  the  grossest 
flattery. 

We  were  soon  in  woman's  true  sphere,  however,  and 
there  was  no  flattery  in  praising  the  gorgeous  vest- 
ments of  silk  and  gold  which  the  nuns  were  making  to 
sell  to  priests.  Nor  was  it  flattery,  in  the  ikon  room, 
which  led  us  to  praise  the  work  of  twenty  or  thirty 
demure-looking  Sisters  who  were  engaged  in  stamping 
out  the  most  intricate  patterns  and  mosaics  on  metal 
surfaces.  Here  they  could  work  from  patterns  and 
tracings  and  were  equal  or  superior  to  men. 

There  was  also  a  department  or  studio  where  about 
fifty  nuns  were  painting  holy  pictures,  with  ancient 
ikons  for  their  models;  and  another  room  where  other 
nuns  ground  and  prepared  the  paint. 

From  these  very  interesting  scenes  of  life  and  activ- 
ity we  once  more  sought  the  acquaintance  of  the  dead, 


NUNS  AND  CONVENTS. 


iSl 


in  the  burial  vaults  beneath  the  convent.  Only  the 
very  wealthy  are  buried  here.  Here  was  a  burial-place, 
indeed.  The  cool,  silent  vaults  were  railed  off  with 
iron  into  squares,  in  which  people  were  buried.  There 
were  marble  angels,  and  paintings  of  the  Saviour  by 
eminent  artists.  Stained-glass  windows  flooded  the 
scene  with  soft  light.  Here,  too,  were  chairs,  tables, 
etc.,  for  the  use  of  relatives.  On  one  of  the  chairs 
in  a  family  inclosure,  sat  a  big  tabby  cat,  fat  and  sleepy. 

"  Da-dah,"  said  the  Sister,  laughing,  1  she  is  keeping 
watch  over  the  dead." 


CHAPTER  XII. 


STOPPED  BY  THE  POLICE. 

ON  Saturday  noon,  July  26,  just  four  weeks  out  from 
Moscow,  we  drew  rein  a  moment  to  inquire  of 
some  moujiks  the  distance  to  Ekaterinoslav,  which  we 
could  see  ahead  of  us,  spread  over  the  slope  leading  up 
from  the  southern  bank  of  the  Dneiper  to  the  steppe 
beyond. 

A  few  versts  through  the  sandy,  fly-plagued  bottom 
lands  of  the  Dneiper,  and  we  were  crossing  the  river 
over  one  of  the  finest  iron  bridges  in  Russia.  There 
was  a  railway  track,  and  a  road  for  ordinary  traffic, 
above.  The  broad,  though  shallow  river,  far  below, 
presented  a  scene  that  was  made  up  of  slowly  floating 
rafts  and  small  river  steamers,  carrying  passengers,  or 
towing  curious  round-roofed  barges.  Small  boats,  of 
the  pointed  half-moon  pattern  affected  by  the  Cossacks 
of  the  Dneiper,  were  also  moving  languidly  hither  and 
thither.  A  small  toll  was  collected  from  teams  and 
horsemen  crossing  the  bridge.  Foot-passengers  paid  no 
toll. 

Ekaterinoslav,  which  from  a  distance  made  a  favor- 
able impression  on  our  minds,  seemed  to  mock  at  our 
delusion  as  we  sought  a  closer  acquaintance.  Russian 
cities,  like  the  Russian  character  and  nearly  all  Russian 
institutions,  are  seen  to  the  best  advantage  when  not 
too  closely  inspected.    A  city  where  all  the  roofs  of 

182 


STOPPED  BY  THE  POLICE. 


the  houses  are  painted  green  and  red,  among  which 
are  a  half  dozen  enormous  churches  with  golden  domes, 
or  domes  painted  blue  and  spangled  with  golden  stars, 
in  imitation  of  the  sky,  presents  a  pretty  enough  pic- 
ture spread  over  a  gentle  slope,  with  a  broad  river  for 
a  foreground. 

Vast  quantities  of  paint  are  used  in  Russia.  Every- 
thing is  daubed  with  paint — houses,  roofs,  railway  sta- 
tions, prisons — nearly  everything  in  the  cities.  The 
colors  most  in  vogue  are  red,  blue,  green,  and  yellow. 

The  colors  of  the  roofs  and  houses  in  the  cities,  and 
the  equally  gay  hues  of  the  clothes  worn  by  the  peas- 
ants in  the  country,  are  the  salvation  of  Russia  from  an 
artistic  point  of  view.  Without  the  red  shirts  of  the 
moujiks  the  Russian  villages  would  present  not  a  sin- 
gle feature  pleasing  to  the  eye  of  the  passing  traveler; 
and  without  the  brightening  paint  the  provincial  cities 
would  be  equally  depressing. 

Ekaterinoslav  consists  of  one  long,  broad  street,  or 
boulevard,  and  several  short  streets,  crossing  it  at  right 
angles.  It  is  a  provincial  capital,  and  contains  about 
40,000  inhabitants,  with  a  large  proportion  of  Hebrews 
and  sectarians  of  many  creeds.  It  was  founded  by 
Catharine  II,  on  her  memorable  and  fantastic  journey  of 
triumph  through  her  dominions,  from  St.  Petersburg  to 
the  Crimea,  under  the  management  of  her  gorgeous 
favorite,  Potemkin. 

That  shrewd  and  gallant  courtier  of  the  great  Catha- 
rine, having  discovered  in  advance  that  much  of  the 
territory  through  which  his  Imperial  mistress  would  pass 
was  uninhabited  steppe,  conceived  and  carried  out  the 
truly  Oriental  project  of  building  sham  villages  all 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


along  the  route.  Log  villages,  brightly  painted,  sprang 
up  like  mushrooms  at  his  bidding,  and  thousands  of 
peasants  were  compelled,  nolens  volens,  to  take  up  their 
residence  in  them  and  to  turn  out  in  their  Sunday 
clothes  when  the  Imperial  party  drove  through.  From 
Kiev  the  Empress  sailed  in  barges  down  the  Dneiper, 
and  taking  a  fancy  to  the  spot  on  which  Ekaterinoslav 
now  stands,  ordered  a  city  to  be  built.  Her  statue  is 
perched  on  the  highest  spot  of  ground  at  the  east  end 
of  the  boulevard. 

This  boulevard  consists  of  three  parallel  roads.  The 
center  track  is  divided  from  the  others  by  an  avenue 
of  trees  and  sidewalks,  and  is  paved  after  the  usual 
manner  of  provincial  Russia,  in  other  words,  so 
abominably  rough  that  the  drosky  drivers  keep  off  it 
altogether,  except  in  wet  weather,  when  the  side  roads 
are  sloughs  of  sticky  mud.  These  side  roads  were 
several  inches  deep  in  dust  as  we  rode  down  the  street 
in  search  of  a  hotel,  and  droskies  and  squeaking  telegas 
plowing  through  it  filled  the  air  to  suffocation. 

Dusty  policemen  eyed  us  suspiciously,  and  news  was 
immediately  conveyed  to  the  Chief  of  Police  that  a 
couple  of  strange  horsemen  had  arrived  in  the  city. 
Ekaterinoslav  is  full  of  latent  sedition,  both  civil  and 
religious,  and  the  authorities  are  offensively  suspicious 
of  anything  that  strikes  them  as  being  a  trifle  out  of 
the  ordinary.  That  we  were  dangerous  characters  to 
be  at  large  seemed  the  opinion  of  every  policeman  who 
cast  his  eye  on  us  as  we  rode  down  the  street,  and  at  the 
hotel  our  passports  were  at  once  declared  l'  irregular." 

In  short,  we  were  to  be  detained  on  some  pretext  or 
other  until  the  police  authorities  had  time  to  revolve 


STOPPED  BY  THE  POLICli. 


in  their  exceedingly  suspicious  minds  all  known  cir- 
cumstances connected  with  us.  Of  course,  we  w  ere  not 
told  this  in  a  straightforward  manner,  blunt  honesty 
in  such  matters  being  entirely  foreign  to  the  police 
authorities  of  Russia,  except  those  at  the  top  of  the 
tree  in  St.  Petersburg,  who  have  nothing  to  fear  in  case 
of  making  a  mistake.  The  provincial  tchinovnik,  when 
called  upon  to  take  action  upon  anything  outside  his 
ordinary  routine,  is  prone  to  lose  his  senses  and  com- 
mit some  remarkable  piece  of  folly.  His  logic  is  sur- 
prisingly eccentric  to  begin  with,  and  he  is  always  pain- 
fully aware  of  being  between  the  Scylla  of  underzeal, 
which  may  cost  him  his  official  head,  and  the  Charvb- 
dis  of  "putting  his  foot  in  it  "  through  meddling  with 
what  he  does  not  understand. 

The  officials  of  Ekaterinoslav  could  not  believe  that 
two  horsemen  might  ride  through  the  country  and  be 
neither  spies  of  some  foreign  government,  secret  mis- 
sionaries bent  on  corrupting  the  allegiance  of  the  Ortho- 
dox moujiks,  political  propagandists  disseminating  the 
seeds  of  sedition,  nor  Nihilists  inciting  them  to  rebell- 
ion against  the  Czar.  All  these  possibilities  and  a 
hundred  variations  of  these,  occurred  to  the  inscrutable 
minds  of  the  tchinovniks  of  Ekaterinoslav  in  connec- 
tion with  our  appearance. 

They  could  not  understand  my  American  passport. 
"  It  should  have  been  written  in  Russian."  Sascha's 
document  was  no  passport  at  all — a  fact  that  we  had  had 
very  good  reason  to  know  without  further  enlighten- 
ment here.  "  Why  hadn't  I  a  special  passport  grant- 
ing the  right  to  travel  through  Russia  in  this  most  ex- 
traordinary manner?" 


i86 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


This  was  indeed  the  rub — we  were  a  little  different 
from  the  mortals  about  them,  a  thing  that  never  fails 
to  arouse  the  suspicions  of  the  Russian  officials  to  ab- 
normal activity.  A  foreigner  on  horseback  with  a 
strange  Russian  for  an  interpreter,  the  one  with  no 
document  except  an  American  passport  which  they 
were  unable  to  make  anything  of,  the  other  with  an 
"  irregular  "  paper  !  No  wonder  that  officials,  whose 
first  qualification  for  the  faithful  discharge  of  their  du- 
ties is  to  be  suspicious  of  everything  and  everybody, 
were  more  than  suspicious  of  us. 

In  Russia  everybody  is  considered  a  criminal  of  some 
kidney  or  other,  unless  he  has  papers  in  his  pocket 
proving  him  to  be  otherwise.  Since,  to  the  tchinovnik 
mind,  we  were  without  such  papers,  we  must  therefore 
be  "  something,"  though  they  were  sorely  puzzled  for  a 
definite  reply  to  their  suspicions. 

Arrest  us?  Oh,  dear,  no!  not  yet.  No  telling  who 
or  what  this  American  might  turn  out  to  be. 

Detain  us,  then,  on  suspicion  ?  No,  not  even  that 
on  direct  police  responsibility  ;  this  American  might 
have  friends  in  high  places  in  St.  Petersburg;  who 
could  tell  ?  Still,  for  all  this,  we  must  be  detained  on 
some  pretext  or  other,  and,  however  fantastic  in  his 
logic,  the  Russian  tchinovnik  is  never  at  a  loss  for  a 
pretext. 

When  we  returned  to  the  hotel,  after  a  visit  to  the 
post-office  and  to  the  railway  station,  where  it  had 
taken  us  a  couple  of  hours  to  unravel  sufficient  red 
tape  to  dispatch  a  valise  to  Sevastopol,  the  hostler  in- 
formed us  that  a  gentleman  in  a  black  coat  and  derby 
hat  had  been  in  the  stable  critically  examining  our 


STOPPED  BY  THE  POLICE. 


,87 


horses.  By  and  by  we  received  notice  from  the  Chief 
of  Police  that  the  Society  for  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Animals  had  pronounced  Sascha's  horse  unfit  to  travel, 
owing  to  a  saddle-sore  on  its  back,  and,  therefore, 
though  very  reluctant  to  detain  us,  he  would  have  to 
beg  us  to  postpone  our  departure  until  further  notice. 

This  was  really  a  clever  move,  thoroughly  Russian, 
not  to  say  Oriental  ;  worthy  of  Mahmoud  Yusuf  Khan, 
the  Afghan  chief,  who  once  obstructed  the  author's 
road  through  Afghanistan,  not  because  he  wished  to 
do  so,  but  "  for  your  own  good  "  ;  worth}'  indeed  of 
the  wiliest  of  diplomats. 

It  seemed  odd,  though,  that  there  should  be  in 
Ekaterinoslav,  the  head-center  of  Russian  Jew-baiting 
and  sectarian  persecution,  a  Society  for  the  Prevention 
of  Cruelty  to  Animals.  There  was  one,  however — a 
society  of  emotional  old  ladies,  so  far  as  we  could  learn. 
They  were  certainly  handy  for  the  Chief  of  Police  to 
turn  to  in  a  case  like  ours,  and  the  tchinovnik  who 
thought  of  them,  and  reasoned  that  horses  that  had 
been  ridden  through  the  midsummer  heat  from  Mos- 
cow might  perhaps  not  be  in  first-class  form,  deserved 
promotion  then  and  there. 

We  proceeded  to  the  police  station  on  Sunday 
morning,  and  spent  an  hour  or  so  waiting  for  the  ar- 
rival of  the  chief.  To  the  under  police  officers  an 
American  was  a  rara  avis,  and  his  demeanor  a  positive 
enigma.  The  spectacle  of  a  human  being  in  civilian's 
clothes,  and  somewhat  travel-worn  clothes  to  boot, 
presuming  to  conduct  himself  in  a  self-reliant,  inde- 
pendent manner  in  a  room  full  of  tchinovniks,  filled 
them  with  amazement. 


i88 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


In  provincial  Russia  the  ordinary  civilian  is  expected 
to  cringe  and  cower  like  a  whipped  cur  before  every 
petty  officer  of  police,  and  the  constitutional  attitude 
of  the  latter  is  one  of  overbearing  insolence.  Ekaterinos- 
lav  is  one  of  the  worst  police-ridden  holes  in  Russia, 
owing  to  the  mixed  character  of  the  population,  and 
the  fact  that  the  city  aspires  to  the  distinction  of  being 
the  chief  intellectual  center  of  South  Russia.  "  Intel- 
lectual centers  "  being,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Czar's 
government,  synonymous  with  treason,  political  in- 
trigue, and  the  like,  the  good  people  of  Ekaterinoslav 
have  to  put  up  with  a  more  than  ordinarily  trouble- 
some dose  of  police  officers  as  an  offset  to  their  human 
vanity  in  the  indulgence  of  intellectual  aspirations. 

The  writer  flatters  himself  that  he  very  likely  gave 
the  police  officers  of  Ekaterinoslav  the  first  faint  con- 
ception which  had  ever  entered  their  queer  minds  that 
a  person  in  private  clothes  might,  after  all,  possess  a 
few  abstract  rights,  even  in  the  presence  of  minions  of 
autocracy  in  uniform. 

Since  none  of  them  offered  me  a  seat,  I  simply  took 
the  nearest  empty  one. 

Such  a  remarkable  occurrence  as  this  had  probably 
never  happened  before  in  all  the  eventful  history  of 
the  police  station  of  Ekaterinoslav.  A  civilian  so 
independent  in  the  presence  of  police  officers  as  to 
take  a  seat!  This  action  produced  a  mild  sensation 
among  the  officers,  and  was  rewarded  with  side  looks 
of  consternation  from  half  a  dozen  civilians  who  stood 
huddled  up  near  the  door,  hats  in  hand,  the  very  pic- 
ture of  sheepish  submission. 

This  was  decidedly  amusing,  and,  leaning  back  com- 


STOPPED  BY  THE  POLICE. 


189 


fortably  in  the  chair,  I  now  cocked  my  feet  up  on  a 
wooden  bench  about  two  feet  high.  This,  though  a 
popular  American  attitude,  was,  of  course,  under  the 
circumstances,  wrong.  But  I  was  now  merely  acting 
a  part  for  the  purpose  of  giving  these  gentlemen  an 
exaggerated  idea  of  the  relative  positions  of  policemen 
and  civilians  in  America,  which  I  wanted  them  to 
understand  to  be  opposite  to  their  relations  in  Ekateri- 
noslav. 

The  last  attitude  caused  them  to  redden  up  to  the 
very  roots  of  their  hair,  and  there  really  seemed  a 
danger  that  one  or  two  of  them  might  even  go  off  into 
apoplectic  fits.  To  them  I  was  as  much  of  a  phenom- 
enon as  a  sheep  who  should  venture  among  wolves 
without  exhibiting  fear.  Had  I  suddenly  thrown  off 
my  civilian  garb,  and  in  familiar  Russian  revealed 
myself  to  them  as  Gen.  Rusezki,  of  the  Petersburg 
Division  of  the  Third  Section  Secret  Police,  who  had 
dropped  in  on  them  in  the  guise  of  an  American 
traveler,  they  would  have  comprehended  me  at  once, 
independent  attitude  and  all.  But  since  nothing  of 
the  sort  took  place,  one  of  the  officers  summoned 
Sascha  into  an  adjoining  room  and  proceeded  to  ques- 
tion him  in  regard  to  my  extremely  queer  behavior. 

Was  this  gentleman  aware  that  he  was  in  the  pres- 
ence of  police  officers  ? 

"  Yes,"  said  Sascha,  "  he  knows  you  are  police  offi- 
cers, but  he  is  an  American,  and  in  America  it  is  the 
police  who  humble  themselves  before  the  people,  and 
not  the  people  before  the  police." 

This  was  Sascha's  exaggerated  interpretation  of 
what  had  been  told  him  some  days  before  as  to  the 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


relations  between  police  and  people  in  England  and 
America.  The  officer  probably  did  not  believe  him, 
since  a  Russian  seldom  believes  what  is  told  him,  unless 
it  agrees  in  some  measure  with  his  own  knowledge  and 
conceptions  ;  and  nothing  in  all  the  wide  range  of 
human  affairs  could  seem  so  wildly  improbable  to  this 
man  as  the  explanation  that  had  been  vouchsafed  by 
my  companion. 

Still  there  must  be  something  in  it,  for  on  no  other 
grounds  could  my  extraordinary  bearing  be  explained. 
And  so,  after  considerable  consultation  together,  they 
decided  to  compromise  matters  by  simply  asking  me 
to  assume  an  upright  position  in  the  chair  instead  of 
the  free-and-easy  American  loll. 

Sascha  explained  afterward  their  talk  among  them- 
selves, which  is  worth  mentioning  as  an  evidence  of 
the  Russian  idea  of  Americans.  They  were  more 
puzzled  than  affronted  at  my  independent  bearing. 
They  had  always  had  a  friendly  feeling  toward  Ameri- 
cans, though  they  knew  very  little  about  them,  they 
agreed  among  themselves  and  with  Sascha.  But  my 
conduct  was  decidedly  different  from  anything  they 
had  ever  thought  of  in  connection  with  us. 

"  Tell  them  that  the  police  officers  are  the  servants 
and  not  the  masters  of  the  people  in  America,"  I  said 
to  Sascha,  not,  however,  without  mental  reservations 
that  would,  if  expressed,  have  made  my  case  rather 
foggy  and  difficult  to  be  understood. 

"  But  this  is  Russia,"  replied  one  of  the  officers. 
"  Here  the  Czar  is  master  and  the  police  represent  his 
power  among  the  people.  Here  the  people  not  only 
have  to  obey  the  police,  but  they  also  have  to  come  to 


STOPPED  BY  THE  POLICE. 


191 


the  police  and  beg  and  pray  to  be  allowed  to  do  what 
they  wish."  And  this  was  said  in  a  tone  of  exultation  : 
"  It  is  we  who  have  the  whip  hand  in  Russia,  and  wc 
mean  to  keep  it,  too  !  " 

The  police  stations  are  the  busiest  places  in  Russia.  ' 
Through  the  instrumentality  of  the  police  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Czar  attempts  to  regulate  the  goings  in 
and  the  comings  out,  and  well-nigh  every  move, 
motive,  and  concern  of  the  whole  vast  population  of 
this  broad  empire,  which  extends  from  the  German 
frontier  to  the  Pacific,  and  contains  120,000,000  souls. 
This  great  organization  of  belted,  booted,  and  sabered 
policemen  are  the  hands,  eyes,  and  ears  of  the  paternal 
government  of  the  White  Czar.  This  paternal  govern- 
ment assumes  that  the  people  are  children,  who  are 
not  to  be  permitted  to  take  the  initiative  in  anything 
beyond  the  mere  animal  acts  of  eating,  drinking,  sleep- 
ing, and  working  in  the  fields. 

By  means  of  the  elaborate  passport  system  the  police 
are  enabled  to  keep  their  hands  on  all  this  numerous 
family,  and  to  require  them  to  apply  at  the  police 
stations  whenever  they  wish  to  do  anything  or  go  any- 
where, much  as  children  apply  to  their  parents.  Hence 
it  comes  that  in  the  Russian  police  stations  there  is  a 
stream  of  people  constantly  coming  and  going.  The 
people  are  mulcted  in  fees  on  every  imaginable  pre- 
text, and  the  amount  of  money  that  flows  into  the 
treasury  through  the  sluices  of  the  police  stations,  in 
the  form  of  petty  exactions,  must  be  enormous.  Half 
as  much  more,  probably,  finds  its  way  into  the  pockets 
of  the  police  officers  in  the  form  of  bribes. 

Bribery  is  carried  on  in  the  Russian  police  offices  in 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


a  comically  open  manner.  We  were  in  the  Ekaterinos- 
lav  office  probably  an  hour,  and  during  that  time  ob- 
served three  separate  cases  that  took  place  under  our 
very  noses  with  hardly  an  effort  at  secrecy.  The  man 
who  seemed  to  come  in  for  the  lion's  share  of  the 
bribes  was  a  little  bald-headed  fellow  who  wore  a  re- 
markably high  collar. 

He  was  the  secretary,  who  had  to  fill  out  passports, 
prepare  petitions,  and  the  like.  When  seated  at  his 
desk  his  back  was  turned  to  my  point  of  observation, 
and  when  he  was  bent  over,  writing,  his  enormous 
collar  concealed  all  but  the  baldest  and  shiniest  part  of 
his  head.  And  when  he  looked  up  and  exposed  the 
remnants  of  hair  that  still  clung  to  the  sides,  it  was  as 
though  a  young  chicken  had  just  succeeded  in  pecking 
a  hole  in  its  shell,  sufficiently  large  to  peep  out  and 
take  a  curious  inventory  of  its  surroundings. 

The  head  did,  in  fact,  take  very  frequent  inventories, 
not  exactly  of  its  surroundings,  but  of  the  group  of 
civilians  who  stood  huddled  up  in  a  humbly  submissive 
attitude,  hats  in  hand,  near  the  door. 

Russian  officials  who  occupy  situations  where  bribes 
are  offered  in  the  presence  of  other  people  always  wear 
short  office  jackets  with  pockets  ready  to  hand  at  the 
sides.  The  little  man  with  the  high  collar  wore  one 
of  these  jackets,  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  the  dex- 
terity with  which  he  could  transfer  paper  money  from 
the  hand  of  a  petitioner  to  the  pockets  in  it  was  beauti- 
ful to  see.  There  was  nothing  particularly  rapid  about 
the  movement,  nothing  of  legerdemain,  in  which  the 
quickness  of  the  hand  is  relied  on  to  deceive  the  eye, 
but  there  was  an  elegant  gracefulness  in  the  act  that 


STOPPED  BY  THE  POLICE. 


193 


stamped  it  at  once  as  an  accomplishment  acquired  by 
long  and  daily  practice. 

The  givers  of  bribes  seemed  to  be  mostly  ignorant 
moujiks  from  the  country.  Among  the  applicants  of 
the  morning  was  a  moujik  who  had  neglected  to  renew 
his  passport  at  the  proper  time.  Passports  have  to  be 
renewed  at  regular  intervals,  and  a  person  who  absents 
himself  for  any  length  of  time  beyond  brings  down 
on  himself  the  suspicions  of  the  authorities  in  addition 
to  penalties  and  fines.  The  "  children  "  of  the  Czar, 
like  any  other  children,  arc  forever  doing  some  foolish 
thing  or  other  that  would  get  them  into  trouble  should 
it  come  to  the  paternal  knowledge.  Anyhow,  it  is  ex- 
tremely uncomfortable  to  come  under  the  ban  of  sus- 
picion, and  above  all  things  else  the  moujik  dreads 
anything  that  will  bring  him  conspicuously  to  the 
notice  of  the  police. 

The  moujik  in  question  stood,  apparently,  perilously 
near  the  precipice  of  police  suspicion,  as  the  bald  head 
of  the  little  secretary  protruded  once  again  above  the 
white  collar  and  scrutinized  the  group  against  the  door, 
and  slightly  nodded.  The  moujik  stepped  forward,  and, 
touching  his  top-knot  with  the  hand  that  held  his  cap, 
handed  the  secretary  a  tattered  document.  It  was  his 
passport,  that  should  have  been  renewed  some  time 
before. 

The  secretary  whirled  round  in  his  chair,  and,  look- 
ing the  delinquent  full  in  the  face,  shot  from  the 
depths  of  his  big,  lack-luster  eyes  a  look  that  spoke 
plainer  than  printed  words.  The  moujik  very  likely 
could  not  have  read  print,  but  he  readily  understood 
the  secretary's  look,  and,  in  fact,  had  been  expecting  it. 


i94 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Crumbled  up  in  his  horny  fist  were  several  greasy 
ruble  notes,  part  of  which  were  to  pay  for  the  new  pass- 
port and  the  others  were  to  be  his  salvation  from  the 
dreaded  suspicion  of  the  police. 

The  notes  were  handed  over,  covertly  slipped  from 
one  half-closed  hand  to  another,  and,  presto  !  part  of 
them  fell  into  the  handy  pocket  just  below  the  little 
secretary's  extended  hand,  and  the  rest  were  smoothed 
out  leisurely  on  his  desk  and  laid  away  in  the  drawer 
where  they  belonged.  The  little  secretary  was,  in 
effect,  a  flesh-and-blood  automaton  :  his  pocket  was  the 
slot  in  which  the  moujik  put  the  rubles,  and  the  prize 
drawn  was  a  passport,  dated  a  month  or  two  back — in 
substance,  a  certificate  of  immunity  from  further  annoy- 
ance and  suspicion  for  several  months  to  come. 

It  is  their  salvation  from  a  peck  of  trouble  that  the 
common  people  of  Russia  know  that  an  automaton  of 
this  character  is  to  be  found  in  every  police  station, 
not  necessarily  with  a  bald  head  and  high  collar,  but 
always  with  a  slot  for  ruble  notes,  by  means  of  which  a 
surprising  variety  of  prizes  may  be  drawn.  When  not 
too  outrageously  exacting,  these  tchinovniks,  with  ready 
hands  and  pockets,  are  consequently  to  be  regarded  as 
friends  rather  than  enemies  of  the  people. 

In  Russia  anything  a  man  does,  or  anything  he  says, 
or  even  anything  he  does  not  do  or  say,  may  get  him 
into  trouble.  Everything  depends  on  how  he  manages 
to  stand  in  the  estimation  of  the  police.  The  offenses 
of  omission  are  as  numerous  as  those  of  commission. 
There  is  a  story  popular  among  the  peasants  that  a 
moujik  was  once  found  dead  in  the  forest.  The  priest 
refused  to  grant  him  burial  in  the  grave-yard  for  fear  he 


STOPPED  BY  THE  POLICE. 


had  committed  suicide,  and  the  police  refused  to  let 
him  be  buried  outside  for  fear  he  had  not  committed 
suicide.  To  settle  the  question  an  autopsy  was  held 
on  the  corpse,  and  when  it  was  cut  open  a  police  certi- 
ficate was  found  inscribed  on  the  heart  stating  his  age, 
his  name,  his  sex,  the  color  of  his  hair,  beard,  and  eyes, 
his  native  village,  and  the  number  of  his  house,  etc. 

In  Russia  almost  every  conceivable  thing  a  man 
might  do  is  regulated  by  the  written  law.  The  Rus- 
sian idea  of  governing  the  people  is  in  direct  opposi- 
tion to  the  conceptions  of  the  West.  With  us  every- 
thing that  the  law  does  not  expressly  forbid  is  per- 
mitted ;  in  Russia  everything  is  forbidden  that  the  law 
does  not  expressly  grant,  which  means  next  to  noth- 
ing at  all.  And  when  the  whole  matter  is  removed 
from  the  realm  of  theory  to  cvery-day  practice, 
Russia,  though  there  is  a  code  of  between  twenty  and 
thirty  huge  folio  volumes  of  about  2000  pages  apiece, 
is  a  country  as  lawless  as  an  African  chieftain's  do- 
main. A  man  with  neither  money  to  bribe,  nor  influ- 
ence in  high  places  to  protect,  is  at  the  mercy  of  any 
petty  police  officer  or  secret  government  spy,  who,  out 
of  sheer  personal  spite,  may  get  him  shipped  off  to  the 
mines  of  Siberia  and  ruined  for  life,  though  he  be  the 
most  innocent  and  harmless  person  in  all  Russia. 

The  second  man,  who  greased  the  palm  and  found 
his  way  to  the  good  offices  of  the  little  bald-headed 
secretary  by  means  of  rubles,  seemed  to  be  a  burlak 
or  city  workman.  The  exact  nature  of  the  transaction 
we  couldn't  make  out.  This  time  when  the  secretary 
examined  the  document  that  was  handed  to  him  he 
discovered  the  rubles  neatly  placed  between  the  folds. 


196 


THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  M  US  TA  JVC 


He  didn't  seem  in  the  least  surprised  or  disconcerted; 
didn't  even  give  expression  to  an  apologetic  little 
cough,  nor  bestow  a  single  glance  of  acknowledgment 
on  the  burlak,  but  just  simply  lowered  the  document 
and  the  rubles  a  trifle  below  the  level  of  his  desk,  and 
when  the  document  was  spread  out  a  moment  later  on 
the  desk  the  rubles  were  gone.  Only  this,  and  nothing 
more. 

My  heart  began  to  warm  toward  this  worthy  gentle- 
man, as  to  a  doctor  engaged  in  alleviating  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  halt,  the  sick,  and  the  blind,  for  which  he 
refuses  to  charge  more  than  they  are  able  and  willing 
to  give.  Bribery,  as  an  abstract  thing,  may  be  detesta- 
ble, but  so  long  as  the  present  form  of  government 
obtains  in  Russia,  by  all  means  multiply  the  number 
of  baldheaded  little  tchinovniks  with  high  collars  and 
large  pockets. 

The  petitioners  who  came  to  the  police  station  while 
we  were  in  the  office  were  a  curious  crowd.  There 
was  an  isv'oshchic  who  came  to  complain  that  a  man 
had  ridden  in  his  drosky  without  having  the  money 
to  pay  his  fare.  There  was  a  poor  old  woman  who 
was  waiting  when  we  arrived  and  was  still  waiting, 
without  anybody  paying  attention  to  her,  when  we 
left  ;  and  there  was  a  plump,  good-looking  young  crea- 
ture, who  sailed  in,  was  received  with  polite  attention, 
shown  into  a  private  office,  and  bowed  out  again,  all 
inside  of  ten  minutes. 

But  the  most  interesting  character  of  any  was  a 
loutish  young  moujik,  of  about  twenty-five  summers,  in 
a  sheepskin  overcoat  warm  enough  for  the  north  pole, 
though  he  was  in  South  Russia  and  it  was  July.  This 


STOPPED  BY  THE  POLICE. 


197 


typical  young  Orthodox  came  blubbering  into  the 
police  office  with  wet  eyes,  which  he  had  rubbed  with 
a  pair  of  huge,  greasy  fists  until  they  were  redder  than 
his  hair,  and  between  pitiful  "boo-hoos!"  and  heart- 
broken snuffles,  told  the  officers  that  he  had  been  play- 
ing cards  and  lost  eight  rubles. 

His  chum,  another  moujik  in  a  sheepskin,  came  with 
him  to  confirm  his  story.  There  was  no  complaint  of 
being  cheated.  He  had  simply  come  to  the  police  as 
a  child,  who  had  let  an  apple  fall  out  of  the  window, 
would  go  weeping  to  tell  its  mother. 

"  Nitchevo  !  "  said  the  officers,  stroking  his  shaggy 
red  head  in  mock  affection  and  patting  him  gently  on 
the  sheepskin  overcoat.  "Nitchevo!"  and  they  sent 
him  off  to  tell  his  tale  of  woe  to  some  official  at  the 
other  end  of  the  city.  This  officer  would  likewise 
reply  tenderly,  "  Nitchevo  !  "  and  send  him  to  some  one 
else;  and  this  one  again  to  yet  another  distant  quarter 
of  Ekaterinoslav,  to  tell  some  one  else.  By  the  end 
of  the  day  the  unfortunate  moujik  and  his  chum  would 
become  weary  of  being  sent  hither  and  thither  to  no 
purpose,  and  so  give  it  up.  What  the)-  expected  to 
gain  by  informing  the  police  had  probably  never 
occurred  to  them. 

At  length  the  Chief  of  Police  arrived.  Behind  him 
came  a  couple  of  policemen,  bringing  a  wretched  look- 
ing Jew,  whom  they  said  had  set,  or  had  tried  to  set, 
fire  to  a  building.  The  Chief  ordered  him  to  be  shut 
up  three  days  in  a  dark  cell  without  food  or  water. 
Sascha  interpreted  the  sentence  to  me,  and  added  that 
it  served  him  right.  The  three  days'  sentence  was,  I 
suppose,  preliminary  to  his  trial. 


198 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


The  Chief  was  an  intelligent,  energetic  man.  He 
took  us  into  his  private  office  and,  understanding  that 
I  knew  nothing  of  Russian,  proceeded  to  question 
Sascha. 

"  Why  was  I  traveling  through  Russia  in  this  strange 
manner?  How  came  it  that  a  Russian  and  an  Ameri- 
can were  journeying  together  on  horseback  ?  What 
was  our  motive?  Who  had  given  us  permission  ?  Did 
I  take  notes  and  send  off  letters  ?  Who  and  what 
was  I  ?  etc." 

But  the  questions  and  answers  were  such  a  curious 
study  of  the  multiformity  of  the  suspicions  that  can 
be  brought  to  bear  on  any  given  subject  by  a  Russian 
police  officer  that  they  deserve  a  separate  chapter. 
They  read  like  one  of  those  catechetical  productions 
that  once  went  the  round  of  the  American  newspapers 
under  the  title  of  "  Mullkittle's  Kid." 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


A  SEARCHING  CROSS-EXAMINATION. 

WHEN  we  returned  to  our  hotel,  after  the  visit  to 
the  Ekaterinoslav  police  station,  Sascha  declared 
himself  "  out  of  mind  with  trouble."  From  the  way 
the  Chief  had  questioned  him  no  end  of  trouble  was 
to  be  expected,  and  all  the  Police  Master  had  said  in 
regard  to  letting  us  proceed  on  our  way  was  to  advise 
us  to  see  the  Governor  of  the  province.  Sascha's 
spirits,  like  those  in  a  barometer  in  stormy  weather, 
were  much  given  to  rising  and  falling,  carrying  him 
into  Himalayan  heights  of  bliss,  and  plunging  him  into 
abysmal  depths  of  despair,  man)-  times  during  a  day- 
Though  he  flung  himself  on  the  lounge  in  our  room 
with  the  abandon  of  a  person  utterly  undone,  w  he  n  we 
returned  from  the  police  station,  dinner,  with  a  bottle 
of  his  favorite  cordial,  brought  him  around  at  once  to  a 
rosier  view  of  the  situation.  The  Chief,  he  thought, 
had  asked  him  at  least  two  hundred  questions,  many 
of  which  were  ridiculous.  The  catechetical  examina- 
tion, as  near  as  he  could  recall  it,  was  as  follows: 
"  Who  is  this  man,  your  companion  ?  " 
"  He  is  an  American,  Mr.  Stevens." 
u  How  do  you  know  he's  an  American  ?  " 
"  He  has  an  American  passport  and  he  speaks  Eng- 
lish.   I  believe  he's  an  American." 

"  The  passport  doesn't  prove  anything.    He  might 

199 


200 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


have  obtained  that  from  some  one  else.  How  do  you 
know  who  he  is?    How  are  we  to  know  ?  " 

"  I  believe  there  is  no  doubt  about  his  being  an 
American.    He  sends  his  letters  to  America." 

"  Ha,  he  sends  letters,  then  ?  " 

"  Yes,  to  America." 

"  What  does  he  say  in  his  letters,  and  where  does  he 
send  them  to  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  what  he  says.  He  sends  them  to 
New  York." 

"How  often  does  he  send  away  letters;  are  they 
big  letters  ?  " 

"Yes,  big  letters,  and  he  sends  them  whenever  we 
reach  a  city." 

"But  what  does  he  find  to  write  about?  what's  his 
business?  is  he  a  correspondent?" 

"  He  sends  letters  to  America  and  he  will  write  a 
book  about  Russia.  This  is  what  he  is  riding  through 
the  country  on  horseback  for." 

"Butyou.  What  are  you  with  him  for?  How'sthis?" 

"  I  am  traveling  with  him  to  interpret  for  him  and 
because  I  wish  to  see  the  country." 

"  But  I  can't  understand  it.  A  Russian  and  an 
American  traveling  together  in  this  extraordinary 
manner.    Who  gave  you  leave  to  do  this  thing?  " 

"  My  brother  and  my  mother  both  gave  their  con- 
sent. My  certificate  of  communion  and  college  certifi- 
cate were  both  lost  with  my  passport.  You  have  seen 
my  passport,  obtained  at  Orel." 

"  That  is  not  a  passport !  You  have  nothing  to  prove 
who  you  are !  You  look  more  like  an  Italian  than  a 
Russian  !  "    (Sascha  was  dark.) 


A  SEARCHING  CROSS-EXAM  J  NATION.  201 


"  I  am  a  Russian  Orthodox.  I  am  well  known  in 
Moscow,  where  my  brother  is  in  business." 

"What's  your  brother's  name?  How  old  is  he? 
What  business  is  he  in  ?    How  do  we  know  all  this?" 

"His  name  is  Nicolai  Critsch.  All  I  tell  you  is 
true." 

"  Did  you  ask  the  Governor  of  Moscow  to  let  you 
make  this  journey?  " 

"  No,  we  didn't  think  it  would  be  necessary." 

"Did  people  in  Moscow  know  you  were  going  to 
start?" 

"  It  was  announced  in  the  newspapers  there." 
"  What  newspapers  ?  " 

"  The  Moskovski  List  ok  >  the  Novosti,  and  others." 
"  Where  did  you  get  the  money  to  make  this  jour- 
ney ?  " 

"  Mr.  Stevens  pays  the  expenses  for  both  of  us." 

"  Where  does  he  get  it  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.    From  America,  I  suppose." 

"  Has  he  got  much  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know." 

"  But  there  must  be  some  motive  for  such  a  journey. 
People  don't  spend  money  and  undergo  the  fatigues  of 
such  undertakings  for  nothing." 

"  I  have  told  you — he  wished  to  write  a  book  about 
Russia." 

"  Ah  !    Has  he  written  books  before  ?  " 
"  Yes  ;  two,  I  believe." 
"About  Russia?" 

"No;  about  Africa,  and  about  a  bicycle  journey 
around  the  world." 

"  Is  he  a  celebrated  man  ?    Is  he  the  American  who 


2  o  2  THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  M  US  TA  NG% 


was  once  a  cowboy  and  has  now  become  famous?  "  (A 
confused  idea  of  Stanley,  and  Carver's  "  Wild  Amer- 
ica " — that  had  been  performing  in  Moscow — cropped 
out  here.) 

"  I  don't  know." 

"  Is  he  writing  good  things  or  bad  about  Russia  ?  " 
"  I  don't  know.    I  don't  think  he  is  writing  bad 
things,  however." 

"  How  do  you  know  he  isn'f  ?  " 
"  I  don't  know." 

"  Where's  his  writing?    Where  does  he  keep  it?" 
"  He  has  sent  it  away,  I  have  said." 
"  Sent  all  of  it  away?  " 

"  He  makes  notes  in  a  book  every  day — short 
notes." 

"What  about?" 

"  About  the  things  we  see  along  the  road." 

"What  do  you  mean  ?    What  things  has  he  seen  ?" 

"  He  writes  about  the  moujiks,  the  traktirs,  the 
uriadniks,  and  the  country." 

"  What  does  he  say  about  the  moujiks  ?  " 

"  He  tells  about  the  way  they  live,  what  they  eat, 
and  how  they  cultivate  the  land." 

"  Does  he  have  anything  to  say  to  them  ?  " 

"  No  ;  he  doesn't  speak  Russian." 

"  Are  you  sure  that  he  doesn't  speak  Russian  ?" 

"  I  have  never  heard  him  speak  Russian." 

"  Perhaps  he  only  pretends  that  he  doesn't.  How 
do  you  know  ?  " 

"  I  don't  believe  he  speaks  any  Russian.  He  asks 
me  about  everything." 

<c  What  things  does  he  ask  you  ?  " 


A  SEARCHING  CROSS-EXAMINATION.  203 

"  About  the  people  ;  all  sorts  of  questions." 

"  Does  he  ever  go  about  among  the  moujiks  without 

"} » » 
you  r 

"  We  are  together  all  the  time." 
"  He  is  always  with  you  ;  never  alone?" 
"  We  have  traveled  together  from  Moscow." 
"  Does  he  sleep  where  you  do?  " 
"  Yes  ;  we  always  stop  at  the  same  place  at  night." 
"  How  do  you  know  he  doesn't  get  up  when  you're 
asleep  and  go  about  among  the  people?" 
"  I  don't  believe  he  does." 
"  But  do  you  know  this  positively  ?" 
"  I  should  know  if  he  did  ;  I  know  he  does  not." 
"  How  would  you  know  if  you  were  asleep  ?" 
"  I  don't  believe  he  does." 

"  What  things  has  he  got  with  him  in  his  saddle- 
bags ?  " 

"  A  few  clothes  and  two  or  three  books." 
"  What  are  the  books  about  ?    Are  they  in  Rus- 
sian ?  " 

"  No,  they  are  in  English.  One  is  an  American 
magazine." 

"  Has  he  got  any  printed  matter  in  Russian  ?  " 
"No." 

"  How  do  you  know  ?  " 
"  I  know  that  he  has  not." 

"  No  little  books,  pamphlets,  or  printed  sheets  ?  " 
"  No;  he  has  nothing  of  the  kind  in  Russian." 
"Are  you  sure  he  doesn't  give  the  moujiks  any 
papers  ?  " 

"  I  have  never  seen  him  give  them  any  papers." 
"  But  in  the  night,  when  you're  asleep  ?  " 


204 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


"  I  believe  he  doesn't  give  them  anything." 

"  You're  a  young  man  and  have  much  to  learn 
from  experience.  What  things  does  he  ask  you 
about  ?  " 

"  I  have  said, — about  the  people  and  the  country." 
"  You  must  not  show  him  any  bad  things.    Do  you 
know  this  ?  " 

"  He  sees  everything  with  his  own  eyes.  I  only  ex- 
plain them  if  he  doesn't  understand.  I  cannot  help 
what  he  sees  as  we  ride  along." 

'  What  else  has  he  got  ?  " 

"  He  has  a  Kamaret." 

"  What's  a  Kamaret  ?  " 

"  A  new  kind  of  camera." 

"  Who  gave  him  permission  to  carry  a  camera?" 
"  I  don't  know.    He  has  no  permission." 
"  What  did  they  say  about  this  at  Tula,  Kharkoff, 
and  Kurskh  ?  " 

"  Nobody  asked  him  about  a  camera  at  these  places." 
"  How  does  he  carry  it  ?  " 
"  On  his  horse." 

"  Has  he  taken  any  pictures  with  it  ?" 
-Yes." 

"  Where  are  they  ?    We  must  see  them." 

"  You  cannot  see  them.  They  are  to  be  taken  to 
America  to  be  developed." 

"  What  pictures  has  he  taken  ?  " 

"  Moujiks,  uriadniks,  houses,  all  sorts  of  things." 

"  What  is  his  idea  in  taking  pictures?  What  will 
he  do  with  them  ?  " 

"  He  wishes  to  show  them  to  people  in  America,  I 
suppose." 


A  SEARCHING  CROSS-EXAMINATION.  205 

"  Doesn't  he  know  he  has  no  right  to  take  pictures 
without  permission  ?  " 

"  He  knows  he  must  not  photograph  prisons  and 
fortresses." 

"  How  do  you  know  he  hasn't  photographed  these 
as  well  ?  " 

"  I  don't  believe  he  has.  He  knows  that  it  is  against 
the  law.  ' 

"  When  did  you  first  make  his  acquaintance  ?  "' 

"A  month  ago,  in  Moscow." 

"  How  did  you  come  to  know  him  ?  " 

"  I  learned  that  he  was  going  to  ride  on  horseback 
to  the  Crimea,  and  volunteered  to  go  with  him  and  in- 
terpret for  him." 

"  You  didn't  know  him  before  he  came  to  Moscow  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  How  did  you  know  what  kind  of  a  man  lie  was  ?  " 

"I  and  my  brother  went  and  saw  him.  lie  is  an 
American,  and  a  good  man." 

"  Did  he  want  you  to  go  with  him  first,  or  only  after 
you  asked  him  ?  " 

"  We  talked  it  over.  He  then  said  he  would  be  glad 
to  have  my  company." 

"  Well,  you  must  see  the  Governor  to-morrow.  He 
wishes  to  see  you.  You  must  not  leave  town  or  take 
any  photographs.    Now,  in  God's  name,  go." 

In  addition  to  this  catechetical  examination,  other 
ingenious  arguments  were  forthcoming  to  convince  us 
that  we  had  no  business  to  travel  through  Russia  on 
horseback  without  the  special  permission  of  the  Gov- 
ernors of  the  various  provinces.  And  these  arguments 
are  worth  reproducing,  because  they  illustrate  better 


206 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


than  whole  volumes  of  pedantic  scribbling  the  Russian 
idea  of  government. 

"  Now,"  said  the  police  officer,  when  we  called  again 
to  see  about  our  passports,  very  politely  and  in  the 
manner  of  a  man  who  had  no  doubt  but  that  he  had  at 
length  discovered  a  thoroughly  invincible  argument, 
"a  Governor  is  master  in  his  province  just  as  a  man  is 
master  in  his  own  home.  Is  it  right  that  you  should 
go  into  a  man's  house  without  obtaining  his  permission, 
and  go  to  taking  photographs  of  his  pictures,  his  statues, 
his  ikons,  his  carpets,  and  furniture,  and  take  notes  and 
write  letters  and  books  about  what  you  have  seen  ? 
Tell  the  American. gospodin  this." 

And  as  Sascha  proceeded  to  explain,  the  officer  made 
a  French-like  gesture,  pantomiming  :  "  There  you  are; 
now  you  see  who  is  in  the  wrong!  " 

"  Tell  him,"  I  said  to  Sascha,  in  reply,  "  that  it  is 
true  we  are  here  without  the  Governor's  permission, 
but  we  come  into  the  province  and  go  out  again  with- 
out stealing  anything  or  killing  anybody,  and  leave 
everything  exactly  as  we  found  it.  What  harm  is  there 
in  photographing  moujiks  and  moujiks'  houses?" 

My  argument,  however,  was  American,  and  his  un- 
compromisingly Russian.  My  position  was  as  illogical 
to  him  as  his  was  impossible  for  me.  Yet  this  man, 
and  several  millions  like  him,  are  living  under  the  re- 
markable delusion  that  they  and  the  Americans  are 
very  much  alike  !  If  there  is  any  real  attraction  be- 
tween Americans  and  Russians  it  seemed  to  me  that 
it  must  be  of  that  character  which  sometimes  draws 
toward  each  other  two  persons  of  strangely  opposite 
natures. 


A  SEARCHING  CROSS-EXAM  IN  A  TION. 


207 


The  officer,  of  course,  shook  his  head  in  disapproval. 

"  You  have  no  right  to  enter  a  man's  house,"  he  pur- 
sued, "  without  his  permission,  even  if  you  harm  noth- 
ing in  it." 

In  the  name  of  Uncle  Sam,  I  thereupon  invited  him 
to  America,  where,  if  he  pleased,  he  might  photograph 
the  entire  country  and  write  anything  he  chose  without 
troubling  himself  to  inquire  whether  anybody  liked  it 
or  not.  And  I  pointed  out  that,  from  his  standard,  a 
man  who  proposed  to  do  anything  in  Russia  would  have 
to  get  leave  from  the  Czar,  then  from  the  Governors, 
then  from  the  starostas  of  the  villages,  and  from  the 
owners  of  the  houses  ;  and  in  order  to  photograph  a 
moujik's  cottage,  one  would  have  to  reckon  with  the 
Czar,  Governor,  starosta,  and  moujik.  I  low  could  a 
moujik's  wretched  hovel  belong  to  four  different 
people  ? 

This  latter  proposition,  however,  Sascha  declined  to 
interpret,  on  the  grounds  that  we  might  get  three  or 
four  days  in  jail  for  "  making  an  insolent  reply." 

At  nine  o'clock  on  Monday  morning  we  called  on 
the  Governor.  At  the  door  of  his  mansion  we  came  in 
contact  with  an  interesting  individual  popularly  known 
as  the  M  Little  Governor."  Russians  with  a  sense  of 
humor  sometimes  refer  to  the  doorkeeper  of  a  Gov- 
ernor's mansion  as  the  "  Big  Little  Governor,  "  since 
this  personage  is  in  one  way  of  even  more  importance 
than  his  master. 

The  secret  of  the  Little  Governor's  power  and  im- 
portance lies  in  the  fact  that  anybody  who  wishes  to 
see  the  Big  Governor  had  best  first  "  see  "  him.  In  fact, 
since  the  Little  Governor  is  invariably  an  Orthodox, 


2o8 


7  'HR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUS  TA  NG. 


it  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  this  plan  is  not  only 
the  easiest  but  very  often  the  only  possible  way.  Though 
the  salary  is  only  about  200  rubles  a  year,  the  posi- 
tion of  Little  Governor  is  said  to  be  one  of  the 
most  coveted  offices  in  Russia.  Certainly,  the  average 
Russian,  below  a  certain  rank,  would  ask  for  no  better 
paradise  than  to  be  autocrat  of  the  hallway  of  a  Pro- 
vincial Governor's  mansion. 

This  particular  Little  Governor  looked  as  if  he  were 
the  depository  of  all  the  secrets  of  Ekaterinoslav ;  and 
it  was  as  good  as  going  to  the  theater  to  see  a  new 
comedy,  to  sit  in  his  little  domain  an  hour  and  observe 
his  fine  play  of  airs  and  condescension  toward  appli- 
cants for  admission  to  the  Governor. 

His  Excellency  the  Governor  turned  out  to  be  a 
bland,  amiable,  and  sensibly  diplomatic  gentleman. 
His  words  were  honey  and  his  smile  as  bewitching  and 
irresistible  as  the  blandishments  of  a  lovely  woman. 
He  inquired  after  our  health  and  assured  us  that  we 
were  to  him  as  if  we  were  his  own  sons.  He  had  heard, 
he  said,  that  an  agent  of  the  Society  for  the  Preven- 
tion of  Cruelty  to  Animals  had  examined  our  horses 
and  had  found  one  of  them  with  a  saddle  sore,  but 
hoped  that  this  would  not  delay  us  very  long. 

Sascha  was  so  thoroughly  overcome  by  the  witchery 
of  the  great  man's  blandishments  that  he  seemed  to 
rise  off  the  very  floor  with  electric  expansion. 

"  I  pray  Your  Excellency,"  said  he,  "to  give  us  a 
letter  saying  that  you  have  no  suspicions  of  us ;  that 
you  have  seen  us  and  believe  us  to  be  good  men." 

"I  have  seen  you,"  said  the  Governor,  "and  have 
pleasure  to  admire  you,"  (yubovatsa)  and  his  Excel- 


A   SEARCHING  CROSS-EX  A  M 1 X A  TlOX. 


209 


lency  beamed  011  Sascha  even  more  sweetly,  more  irre- 
sistibly than  ever. 

In  the  same  smooth  and  fascinating  tone  of  voice, 
accompanied  by  the  same  irresistible,  confidence-in- 
spiring smile,  he  then  kindly  asked  Sascha  a  few  ques- 
tions, similar  to  those  that  had  been  put  to  us  at  the 
police  station.  None  but  a  very  skeptic,  however, 
would  have  found  it  in  his  heart  to  have  suspected 
the  Governor  of  asking  those  questions  because  he  had 
any  suspicions  of  us,  or  of  taking  anything  but  the 
most  paternal  and  kindly  interest  in  our  case. 

He  also  hoped  that  Sascha  had  not  shown  me  any- 
thing bad  in  the  country,  as  the  Chief  of  Police  had 
hoped  ;  but  so  fatherly  and  benevolent  a  friend  to  us 
as  the  Governor  would  never  be  guilty  of  expressing 
himself  in  the  form  of  a  command. 

It  was  all  very  sweet  and  bewitching,  this  interview 
with  His  Excellency,  and  when  we  were  graciously 
dismissed,  one  of  us,  at  least,  was  in  the  seventh  heaven 
of  bliss  and  walked  down  and  out  of  the  Gubernatorial 
presence  with  a  flutter  of  delicious  excitement. 

We  had  been  received  in  the  Gubernatorial  ball 
room,  a  large  apartment,  with  mirrors,  gilt  chairs,  and  a 
pretty  little  balcony  for  the  orchestra.  We  had  been 
shown  to  seats  just  beneath  this  balcony  to  wait  until 
the  Governor  came  out  to  receive  us,  and  it  was  under 
the  balcony,  with  backs  turned  to  it,  that  we  had  stood 
all  the  time  that  His  Excellency  smiled  on  us  and 
questioned  us. 

My  somewhat  varied  experience  of  the  Oriental 
world  led  me  to  suspect  that  seats  had  been  thought- 
fully set  for  us  under  this  pretty  little  balcony  previous 


2IO 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


to  our  arrival,  and  that  all  the  time  the  Governor  was 
interviewing  us  that  genial  gentleman's  official  ste- 
nographer had  been  ensconced  therein,  kindly  noting 
down  all  that  was  said.  Sascha  wouldn't  believe,  how- 
ever, that  such  a  paragon  of  affability  and  tenderness 
as  His  Excellency  could  be  guilty  of  so  ungenerous  a 
proceeding,  and  so  the  slight  noise  that  I  fancied  I 
had  heard  in  the  pretty  little  balcony  behind  us  was 
probably  the  Gubernatorial  cat  in  quest  of  mice. 

Had  not  His  Excellency,  forsooth,  during  the  inter- 
view intimated  that  ''everything  would  be  all  right?" 
And  from  this  had  not  our  sanguine  souls  drawn  the 
inference  that  our  passports  were  to  be  returned  to  us 
immediately  and  that  the  Governor  would,  as  Sascha 
had  requested,  give  us  additional  documents,  stating 
that  he  had  seen  us  and  believed  us  to  be  good  men  ? 

So,  returning  to  the  hotel  to  make  preparations  for 
our  departure,  I  left  Sascha  at  the  Gubernatorial 
mansion  to  bring  on  the  papers. 

One,  two,  three  hours  I  waited,  and  then,  wonder- 
ing what  could  be  detaining  him,  returned  and  sought 
him  out.  Sascha  was  discovered  seated  in  an  office 
deep  in  despair.  The  reason  being  that,  although  he 
gathered  from  the  Governor's  intimations  that  we  were 
to  receive  our  papers  and  be  permitted  to  go  on  our 
way,  none  of  the  Governor's  secretaries  and  subor- 
dinates would  assume  the  responsibility  of  taking  any 
chance  in  the  matter  of  securing  them  for  him. 

After  appealing  in  vain  to  the  secretaries,  he  had 
even  permitted  himself  to  become  indignant,  that  these 
underlings  should  callously  ignore  the  wishes  of  so 
gracious  a  gentleman  as  their  master,  and  had  rushed 


A  SEARCHING  CROSS-EXAMINATION.  211 


down-stairs  and  appealed  to  our  very  important  friend 
the  Little  Governor.  To  his  further  astonishment, 
however,  even  the  Little  Governor  seemed  all  at  once 
to  have  grown  callous  and  indifferent,  and  confined 
himself  to  merely  stating  that  His  Excellency  was  a 
very  busy  man,  and  that  Gen.  So-and-so,  a  very  im- 
portant person,  had  once  waited  a  whole  week  before 
he  was  granted  an  audience. 

Russian  officials  are  past  -  masters  in  the  noble 
Oriental  art  of  humbugging  and  procrastinating,  and 
becoming  alarmed  at  the  Little  Governor's  hint  about 
Gen.  So-and-so,  who  had  waited  a  week,  I  then 
and  there  determined  on  a  somewhat  heroic  expe- 
dient. 

The  most  effective  weapon  against  Eastern  humbug 
is  Western  bounce.  Interpreting  literally,  according 
to  my  instructions,  Sascha  now  informed  the  chief  of 
the  bureaucratic  staff  in  the  office  that  if  the  necessary 
papers  to  allow  us  to  continue  on  our  way  were  not 
forthcoming  by  three  o'clock,  I  intended  to  "telegraph 
to  the  American  government  that  an  American  citizen 
was  illegally  detained  by  the  officials  of  Ekaterinoslav. 
That  the  American  government  would  then  telegraph 
to  St.  Petersburg,  and  then  whatever  happened,  the 
responsibility  would  lie  on  their  own  heads."  (!) 

The  tchinovniks  didn't  exactly  curl  up  and  die  at 
this  threat  of  communicating  with  Uncle  Sam,  but 
they  changed  color  and  exhibited  various  other  unmis- 
takable signs  of  having  been  touched  on  a  very  sensi- 
tive spot.  Having  delivered  this  home  thrust,  I  went 
back  to  the  hotel. 

By  and  by  Sascha  turned  up,  once  again  in  high 


212 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


feather.  "  It's  all  right  now,"  he  said  ;  "  they  only  want 
money  to  pay  for  stamps  to  put  on  the  documents  the 
Governor  will  give  us."  I  gave  him  the  money  for  the 
stamps.  In  an  hour  he  turned  up  again,  slightly  crest- 
fallen. 

More  money  for  more  stamps. 

This  time  I  returned  with  him,  and  the  upshot  of  it 
all  was  that  after  paying  twice  over  for  the  stamps — 
three  rubles  and  twenty  kopecks — we  received  a  couple 
of  papers  without  any  stamps  on  them  at  all  and  an 
order  that  I  would  not  be  allowed  to  proceed  unless  I 
sent  my  Kamaret  back  to  Moscow.  I  took  a  firm 
stand,  however,  on  the  question  of  the  camera,  and 
told  the  Governor  I  should  take  it  with  me  and  he 
could  do  as  he  pleased  about  stopping  me  and  taking 
it  away  on  his  own  responsibility. 

Responsibility  is  a  capital  word  to  conjure  with  in 
any  trouble  with  Russian  officers,  for  they  dread  the 
assumption  of  it  worse  than  anything  else  on  earth. 
As  for  telegraphing  to  America,  the  gentlemanly 
Governor  begged  that  I  would  not  do  him  the  injus- 
tice to  suppose  that  such  a  thing  were  necessary  in 
connection  with  our  visit  to  his  province ;  he  was  only 
too  delighted  to  facilitate  my3movements,  though  he 
would  prefer  that  I  send  away  my  camera.  The  Gov- 
ernor of  the  Crimea,  however,  he  felt  sure,  would 
refuse  to  let  us  proceed,  and  there  it  might  be  neces- 
sary to  telegraph. 

During  our  visits  to  the  Gubernatorial  offices  we 
were  once  unwittingly  left  in  a  room  by  ourselves,  on 
the  table  of  which  lay  a  number  of  documents.  They 
were  reports  that  had  been  brought  in  that  morning  by 


A  SEARCHING  CROSS-EXAMINATION. 


213 


secret  agents  of  the  Third  Section  of  His  Imperial 
Majesty's  police. 

We  were  left  in  that  room  only  ten  or  fifteen  min- 
utes, and  during  that  brief  period  a  flood  of  light  was 
let  in  on  my  soul,  in  regard  to  the  methods  of  the 
rulers  of  the  Russian  people,  as  brilliant  as  the  light 
that  smote  with  blindness  Saul  of  Tarsus.  There  was, 
however,  this  difference,  that  whereas  the  light  that 
fell  upon  Saul  came  from  heaven,  that  which  came  to 
me  seemed  to  glare  up  from  the  opposite  direction  ; 
and  while  he  was  temporarily  blinded,  the  partial 
blindness  with  which  I  had  hitherto  been  regarding  the 
affairs  of  Russia  was  instantly  removed.  One  of  these 
reports  read  thus : 

JULY  16  (our  date  28),  1890. 
I  was  invited  by  the  pries/  I  van  ov  ski  to  be  present  at 
his  Jwuse  in  the  assumed  eharaeter  of  a  relation  of  the  po- 
padya  (the  priest's  wife)  from  Novomoskovski,  when  the 
monjik  Nicolai  Nicolaiviteli  would  came  to  talk  about  re- 
ligion. The  monjik *s  wife  came  with  him  and  took  part 
in  the  diseussion.  During  the  talk  this  woman  spoke 
disrespectfully  of  the  Czar.  A.  K. 

Another  one  bearing  ftie  same  date,  but  a  different 
signature,  read : 

I  was  one  of  a  party  in  the  traktir  of  Petro  Paulovitsch, 
drinking  tea.  The  party  consisted  of  myself  (here  came 
several  names  which  we  couldn't  remember)  ;  the  con- 
versation was  about  the  badness  of  the  harvest  in  the 
province.  Alexander  Petrovitsch  (or  Petrovski)  expressed 
the  belief  that  the  Czar  would  not  allow  a?iy  grain  to  be 


214 


THROJJGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


exported  ;  whereupon  Ivan  Ivanovitsch  spoke  badly  of  the 
Czar.  I.  P. 

Another  paper  seemed  to  be  a  description  of  our 
own  case,  since  it  spoke  of  a  "  Russian  and  a  foreigner 
traveling  together  ;  "  but  before  anything  further  could 
be  secured  we  were  interrupted.  Under  the  circum- 
stances, expecting  some  one  to  appear  on  the  scene  at 
any  moment,  it  was  impossible  to  copy  the  reports 
verbatim,  so  that  the  names  in  them  will  not  be  identi- 
cal ;  but  for  all  practical  purposes  these  are  authentic 
copies. 

Comment  on  them  is  almost  superfluous.  Two 
hours  later  we  were  once  more  riding  over  the  free 
steppe,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  our  horses  were 
carrying  us  away  from  purgatory. 

All  along  the  route  from  Moscow  I  had  been  im- 
pressed by  the  loyalty  of  the  moujiks  to  the  Czar.  The 
village  priests,  though  a  thoroughly  drunken  and  dis- 
solute set,  I  had  regarded  chiefly  as  "  small  rogues," 
bent  on  making  as  much  as  they  could  out  of  the  igno- 
rance and  credulity  of  the  peasants,  and  cutting,  on 
the  whole,  a  comical  rather  than  a  harshly  disreputable 
figure  in  the  country.  To  come  suddenly  and  unex- 
pectedly on  one  seriously  plotting  with  the  secret 
police,  inviting  one  of  them  to  come  to  his  house  and 
pose  as  a  relative  of  his  wife  on  a  visit,  in  order  to  play 
the  spy  on  the  parishioner  who  was  coming  to  have  a 
talk  with  him  about  religion,  was  like  stumbling  on  a 
ghastly  corpse. 

As  for  the  wretched  moujiks,  their  fatal  delusion, 
based  on  their  impenetrable  ignorance,  can  only  be 
called  pitiable. 


A  SEARCHING  CROSS-BX AMI NATION. 


No  comment  is  necessary  in  regard  to  the  Czar. 
Everybody  who  knows  him  personally  agrees  that  he  is 
an  amiable  man  and  a  model  husband. 

In  the  post-offices  and  all  public  rooms  of  the  prov- 
inces of  South  Russia  hangs  a  picture  of  the  Czar. 
One  day  we  called  in  the  post-office  of  Ekaterinoslav 
to  inquire  for  letters.  No  ikons  were  visible,  so  I  did 
not  remove  my  hat,  as  I  was  accustomed  to  do,  in 
deference  to  the  religious  customs  of  the  people,  where 
there  were  ikons. 

In  a  moment  an  official  stepped  up  to  me  and  de- 
manded in  an  overbearing  tone,  "  Please  remove  your 
hat !  " 

"  But  there  are  no  ikons  in  the  room,"  I  said,  look- 
ing around. 

"  Ah,  but  there  is  an  ikon,"  he  returned. 
"  Where  is  it,  then?" 

"There  it  is;  that's  an  ikon!"  he  half  shouted, 
officiously.  And  he  pointed  to  a  cliromo  of  his  most 
amiable  Majesty  the  Czar. 

Not  caring  to  jeopardize  the  success  of  my  ride  to 
the  Crimea,  I  removed  my  hat. 

But  one  could  not  help  wondering  whether  the  Czar 
knows  how  utterly  ridicujous  this  attempt  to  deify  his 
chromos  appears  in  the  eyes  of  foreigners. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


MY   INTERPRETER  RETURNS. 

WE  were  now  in  a  country  where  a  large  share  of 
the  population  were  secretly  and  openly  dissen- 
ters from  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church,  and  by  no 
means  so  loyal  to  the  Russian  government  as  the  peo- 
ple of  the  provinces  we  had  traversed  on  the  way  from 
Moscow.  The  steppes  of  Southern  Russia  are  dotted 
over  with  the  villages  of  colonists  from  Germany,  who 
have  settled  there  at  various  periods  of  the  past  two 
centuries.  These  people  have  stubbornly  clung  to  their 
Protestantism,  and  have  infused  a  spirit  of  restless 
skepticism  in  regard  to  the  efficacy  of  the  dead  ceremo- 
nials of  the  Orthodox  Church,  in  the  minds  of  a  large 
share  of  the  Russian  and  Cossack  population.  More- 
over, their  attitude  toward  the  Czar  and  his  government 
differs  from  the  blind  infatuation  of  the  Orthodox 
moujiks,  in  that  they  are  intelligent,  reasoning  beings, 
who  have  brought  from  Germany  or  inherited  from 
their  German-born  parents  the  logic  and  philosophy  of 
Teuton  civilization. 

They  have  also  imported  into  the  country  the  Teu- 
ton's methodical  and  thrifty  habits  of  life  ;  and  on  the 
road  beyond  Ekaterinoslav  we  began  to  meet  prosper- 
ous looking  farmers,  driving  fat  teams  of  horses  in 
strong,  gayly-painted  wagons,  the  like  of  which  my  com- 
panion from  the  old  Muscovite  capital  had  never  set 

216 


M  Y  IN  TERPRE 1 ER  RE  7 '  URNS. 


eyes  on  before,  and  which  the  improvident  moujiks  of 
the  north  and  central  provinces  had  never  yet  dreamed 
of.  Sascha  regarded  these  German  colonists,  dressed 
in  decent  clothes  and  driving  to  town  in  wagons  as 
good  as  the  wagon  of  an  American  farmer,  with  aston- 
ishment. Here  were  peasants  of  a  status  that  were  to 
him,  on  this,  his  first  acquaintance  with  them,  a  posi- 
tive enigma.  While  he  could  not  but  agree  with  me, 
when  I  suggested  that  if  all  the  peasants  of  the  Rus- 
sian Empire  were  as  thrifty  and  prosperous  as  these  it 
would  be  a  tremendous  improvement  on  the  present 
state  of  affairs,  his  agreement  was  a  very  reluctant,  half- 
hearted admission. 

"  These  people,"  said  he,  "  are  better  than  our  mou- 
jiks for  earning  money  and  cultivating  the  soil,  but 
they  are  not  warm-hearted  like  the  moujiks." 

Ninety-nine  Russians  out  of  a  hundred  would  have 
given  this  same  answer.  It  is  the  stock  excuse  that  the 
educated  Russian  always  has  ready  at  the  end  of  his 
tongue  when  a  question  of  comparison  is  raised  be- 
tween the  moujiks  and  the  more  thrifty  and  enterpris- 
ing peasantry  of  other  nationalities, — "  Our  moujiks  are 
warm-hearted." 

There  certainly  is  something  to  be  said  on  this  score, 
not  only  of  the  moujiks,  but  of  all  classes  of  Russians 
who  remain  true  to  their  Slav  nature,  and  unaffected 
by  contact  with  the  pride  and  individualism  of  the  West. 
One  must  almost  necessarily  be  a  Slav  himself,  however, 
to  fully  appreciate  the  advantages  and  beauty  of  that 
maudlin  warmth  of  heart  that  leads  big-whiskered  cav- 
alry officers  to  kiss  one  another  in  the  public  streets,  and 
{^ear-like  moujiks  to  slobber  over  and  hug  each  other 


2l8  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG 


when  in  their  cups.    Few  Americans  but  would  much 
rather  be  kicked  than  kissed  by  a  man  ;  and  the  better  • 
educated  Russians  are  nowadays  getting  to  be  more 
reserved  in  the  matter  of  public  osculatory  greetings 
between  man  and  man. 

We  put  up  at  a  post-station,  the  first  night  out  from 
Ekaterinoslav,  twenty-five  versts  from  the  scene  of  our 
late  detention  and  worrying  by  the  police.  A  young 
Pole,  in  the  uniform  of  an  infantry  regiment,  here 
weighed  the  hay  and  measured  the  oats  for  our  horses. 
His  regiment  was  stationed  at  Ekaterinoslav,  and,  like 
most  of  the  soldiers  who  comprised  its  rank  and  file,  was 
endeavoring  to  augment  his  fat  pay  of  two  rubles  and 
seventy-five  kopecks  (one  and  a  half  dollars)  a  year,  by 
working  in  the  harvest  fields.  He  was  permitted  to 
work  out,  he  said,  twenty-five  days  a  month.  During 
harvest  he  could  earn  three  rubles  a  fortnight,  for  which 
he  had  to  work  about  sixteen  hours  a  day ;  at  other 
times  from  three  to  four  rubles  a  month  when  he  could 
get  anything  to  do.  This  youth,  buried  in  a  Russian 
regiment,  a  thousand  miles  from  home,  was  still 
at  heart  every  inch  a  Pole,  as  every  Pole  continues  to 
be  wherever  you  happen  across  one.  "  I'm  not  a  Rus- 
sian," he  said,  the  first  chance  he  had  of  speaking 
about  himself,  "  I'm  a  Pole." 

From  this  station  we  made  a  detour  of  about  twenty 
versts  off  the  main  road  to  visit  the  historic  grounds 
of  the  Zaparozhian  Cossacks,  on  the  Dneiper.  Our 
way  was  over  the  rolling  steppe,  which  was  here 
and  there  distinguished  by  a  mound  about  twenty 
feet  high  and  fifty  in  diameter,  surmounted  by  a 
wooden  cross.    These  were  the  graves  of   the  old 


MY  INTERPRETER  RETURNS. 


Cossack  hetmans  of  the  Zaparozhian  military  re- 
public, the  headquarters  of  which  were  on  a  group 
of  islands  in  the  Dneiper,  and  which  we  have  been 
made  familiar  with  in  "  Taras  Bulba,"  and  other  works 
relating  to  the  Cossacks.  The  Cossacks  have  disap- 
peared, and  the  wild,  free  steppe,  which  we  read  of  in 
connection  with  them  in  the  heydey  of  the  Zaparozhian 
seek,  is  mostly  under  cultivation.  Nothing  remains  to 
distinguish  the  spot,  as  historically  significant  in  con- 
nection with  them  and  their  period,  but  the  lone  crosses 
on  the  mound  graves  of  their  hetmans,  and  names 
rudely  scratched  on  the  rocks  on  the  islands  in  the 
Dneiper. 

They  were  a  fighting,  carousing,  turbulent  set  of 
horsemen,  who  were  always  at  war  with  the  Turks, 
Poles,  and  Russians.  Under  their  famous  hctman 
Mazeppa,  they  joined  Charles  XII,  of  Sweden,  against 
Peter  the  Great,  on  the  battle-field  of  Poltava  in  1709; 
and  the  punishment  inflicted  on  them  by  the  Czar  for 
joining  his  enemies  was  the  beginning  of  their  end  as  a 
semi-independent  people.  They  were  afterward  con- 
cerned in  the  great  Cossack  rebellion,  under  Pugachev, 
in  the  reign  of  Catherine  II  ;  in  revenge  for  which 
Catherine  broke  up  their  establishment  on  the  Dneiper 
entirely. 

On  the  banks  of  the  Dneiper,  opposite  the  islands 
on  which  were  the  Zaparozhian  permanent  military 
camps,  called  the  seek,  is  now  to  be  found  as  meek  and 
unpretentious  a  village  of  grain-growers  as  are  to  be 
found  in  all  Russia.  A  peculiarity  of  the  villages 
hereabout  was  the  remarkably  small  size  of  the  horses. 
Compared  to  the  wagons  and  huge  wagon-loads  of  rye 


2  2  o  THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUST  A  NG. 


and  wheat  which  they  were  hauling  in  from  the  fields, 
they  seemed  ridiculously  undersized.  On  the  unculti- 
vated parts  of  the  steppe  now  also  began  to  appear 
big  flocks  of  merino  sheep,  and  the  rude  day-shelters  of 
the  shepherds. 

Finding  nothing  to  justify  a  halt  at  Zaparozhia,  we 
rode  on,  and  for  the  night  regained  the  main  road  and 
the  post-station  of  Kanseropol.  The  sun  was  melting 
hot,  the  way  was  dusty,  and  the  bare,  drouth-deadened 
steppe  insufferably  dreary  to  the  eye.  The  heat,  the 
dust,  the  hard  fare  of  the  villages,  and  the  dreary 
monotony  of  the  southern  steppes,  had,  ever  since 
leaving  Kharkoff,  been  particularly  rough  on  Sascha. 
His  sanguine  idea  of  a  "two  month's  picnic  on  horse- 
back "  had,  of  course,  vanished  like  a  shadow  ere  we 
had  been  on  the  road  a  week.  Though  a  pleasant 
companion  enough,  and  a  very  useful  one  in  my  case, 
his  moral  stamina  was  not  equal  to  the  prolonged 
hardships  and  discomforts  of  the  ride.  For  two  weeks 
past  he  had  been  a  good  deal  of  a  drag,  wavering  daily 
between  the  ambition  to  finish  what  he  had  set  out  to 
do,  and  a  hankering  after  the  comforts  of  his  home- 
life  in  Moscow. 

By  appealing  to  his  pride,  and  reminding  him  of  the 
sorry  figure  he  would  cut  in  the  eyes  of  his  sweetheart, 
who  had  decorated  him  with  roses  at  Tula  ;  and  of  his 
brother  and  friends  in  Moscow,  should  he  return  with- 
out having  finished  the  ride,  I  had  managed  to  per- 
suade him  along  as  far  as  Kanseropol.  Here,  how- 
ever, finding  the  sun  growing  hotter  and  the  discom- 
forts of  the  road  increasing  rather  than  diminishing, 
he  decided  to  return  to  Ekaterinoslav,  sell  his  horse, 


M  Y  IN  I  ERPRE  1 ER  RE  TURNS. 


221 


and  go  back  home.  More  than  two  thirds  of  our  jour- 
ney were  accomplished  ;  twelve  or  fourteen  days'  ride 
would  bring  us  to  Sevastopol,  but  Sascha  was  thor- 
oughly demoralized. 

"I  am  like  Hamlet,"  said  he,  as  he  lay  on  his  back 
in  the  stable,  mentally  balancing  the  ignominy  of  a 
retreat,  and  the  hard  experiences  of  the  road  to  suc- 
cess. "  I  am  like  Hamlet  ;  I  don't  know  what  to  do." 
He  at  length  decided  to  return. 

I  had  been  so  well  satisfied  with  his  intelligence  and 
readiness  to  give  information  that  it  was  no  more  than 
just  to  treat  him  very  liberally  in  the  matter  of  funds, 
so  that  he  might  enjoy  himself  for  a  time  in  Moscow 
by  way  of  compensation  for  the  discomforts  he  had 
experienced  on  the  ride.  In  some  respects,  however, 
I  was  not  sorry  at  the  prospect  of  finishing  the  trip 
without  him.  He  was  possessed  of  many  traits  that 
were  endurable  enough  and  even  valuable,  so  long  as 
I  was  interested  in  them  as  an  exposition  of  the  Rus- 
sian character;  such  as  a  curious  sort  of  suspicion  as 
to  the  motives  of  well-nigh  everything  I  said  or  did 
from  day  to  day,  and  an  equally  Russian  shortcom- 
ing in  the  matter  of  reliability;  but  which  had  become 
by  this  time  very  annoying.  His  virtues,  how  ever,  it 
is  but  fair  to  say,  outweighed  his  faults,  and  the  latter 
were  such  as  seem  to  be  inherent  in  well-nigh  every 
Russian. 

Though  riding  on  horseback  day  after  day  had 
turned  out  to  be  more  of  a  fatiguing  task  than  a  picnic, 
and  his  native  country  had  been  a  revelation  to  him  in 
the  matter  of  heat  and  dreariness,  the  ride  had  never- 
theless been  profitable  in  many  ways,  he  said,  during 


222 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


our  parting  conversation  at  Kanseropol.  Among  other 
things,  he  had  been  quietly  studying  the  Americans — 
with  me  for  his  model.  Now,  he  thought,  he  might 
say  he  knew  them  thoroughly.  Among  their  most 
conspicuous  traits  was  a  peculiar  fondness  for  dogs, 
horses,  and  little  children.  They  never  said  what  they 
didn't  mean,  and  always  did  what  they  said  they  were 
going  to  do.  (To  the  Russian  mind  the  latter  traits 
must  have  seemed,  indeed,  remarkable.) 

But  the  most  peculiar  thing  he  had  learned  about 
them,  was  that  they  never  made  a  big  fuss  about  little 
things.  This  latter  important  characteristic  was  dis- 
covered by  him,  it  appeared,  from  an  incident  that 
occurred  between  us  somewhere  on  the  road  between 
Kurskh  and  Kharkoff.  I  remembered  the  occasion  as 
he  recalled  it.  The  whimsical  idea  had  occurred  to 
him  to  give  his  horse  a  feed  of  white  bread  for  its  mid- 
day meal.  Replying  to  his  request,  I  simply  answered 
"very  well."  This  laconic  reply  to  so  extraordinary  a 
proposition  as  feeding  his  horse  white  bread,  struck 
him  as  being  so  very  remarkable  that  he  had  remem- 
bered it  and  treasured  it  up  as  peculiarly  American. 
Two  Russians,  he  said,  would  have  discussed  the  sub- 
ject pro  and  con  for  an  hour,  and  have  made  observa- 
tions about  it  for  days  afterward. 

And  so  it  came  about  that  after  Kanseropol,  Texas 
and  I  were  thrown  upon  our  own  resources  and  society. 
He  and  Sascha's  horse  had,  of  course,  grown  attached 
to  each  other;  but  just  how  strong  this  attachment 
had  become  was  not  apparent  until  the  hour  of  their 
forcible  separation.  Though  mine  was  the  hand  that 
fed  him,  and  Sascha's  horse  was  an  atrocious  pilferer 


MY  INTERPRETER  RETURNS. 


223 


who  was  forever  trying  to  get  at  his  oats,  and  often  bit 
him  into  the  bargain,  when  it  came  to  choosing  be- 
tween us,  Texas,  inconsistent  as  Polly  Ann,  who  jilted 
her  policeman  lover  in  favor  of  the  thief  he  had  cap- 
tured making  off  with  her  purse,  went  back  on  his 
human  friend  and  protector  without  a  moment's  hesita- 
tion. 

Texas's  strongest  points,  next  to  his  timidity,  were  his 
appetite  for  oats  and  barley,  and  his  extremely  sociable 
disposition.  His  big,  sociable  heart  rebelled  energeti- 
cally against  the  forcible  sundering  of  two  companions, 
who  had  for  a  month  past  fed  out  of  the  same  trough, 
drank  out  of  the  same  bucket,  shared  the  same  stable, 
yearned  for  one  another's  oats,  took  snap  bites  at  each 
other's  ribs,  fought  flies  together,  and  shoulder  to 
shoulder  had  safely  passed  through  the  ordeal  of 
inspection  at  the  hands  of  the  old  ladies,  S.  P.  C.  A., 
of  Ekaterinoslav.  lie  rebelled  as  I  led  him  alone  out 
of  the  postayali  dvor;  and  as  though  realizing  all  at 
once  the  dismal  significance  of  this  new  departure, 
uttered  a  whinnying  neigh  of  deep  and  fearful  yearning. 

This  musical  evidence  of  a  broken  heart  was  re- 
peated at  brief  intervals  for  several  miles  along  his 
lonely  way;  and  when,  the  day  getting  hot,  and  his 
anxiety  about  his  chum  producing  moisture  under  the 
saddle,  I  essayed  to  walk  and  lead  him  awhile,  Texas 
bluntly  refused  to  lead.  All  efforts  to  reason  with  him 
and  to  win  him  over  by  stroking  him  on  his  white  nose 
proved  abortive.  His  only  response  would  be  a  look 
of  melting  reproach,  and  an  effort  to  wheedle  me  into 
turning  back. 

For  three  days  this  sort  of  struggle  went  on  ;  the 


224 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


only  three  days  on  the  entire  journey  when  I  remained 
in  the  saddle  for  the  whole  forty  to  fifty  versts  a  day. 
This  would  never  do.  Saddle-sores  would  inevitably 
result  ;  for  only  by  watching  him  with  never-flagging 
solicitude  had  I  kept  him  in  good  condition  through 
the  long,  weary  drag  in  the  sweltering  heat  and  dust  of 
the  Russian  midsummer.  Even  on  the  morning  of  the 
fourth  day  he  refused  to  lead,  except  toward  the  North. 

But  that  morning,  as  I  rode  along,  there  flashed  into 
my  mind  a  cartoon  I  had' once  seen  of  a  donkey  race, 
in  which  the  victory  had  been  won  by  an  ingenious 
jockey  who  held  a  carrot  on  the  end  of  a  stick  a  foot 
or  two  in  front  of  his  ass's  nose.  In  its  eagerness  to 
reach  the  carrot,  the  donkey  put  on  such  a  tremendous 
burst  of  speed  that  it  immediately  outstripped  its 
competitors  and  won  the  race. 

There  were  no  carrot-gardens  on  the  steppe ;  but 
there  were  occasional  patches  of  Indian  corn,  the  sight 
of  which  always  aroused  in  Texas  the  criminal  cov- 
etousness  of  a  born  kleptomaniac.  A  handful  of  the 
green  succulent  blades,  or  a  half-ripe  nubbin  covertly 
stolen  from  away-side  patch,  would  excite  in  him  such 
gastronomic  felicity  that  the  juice  would  run  out  of 
his  mouth  ;  and  he  was  humbly  thankful  even  for  the 
small  privilege  of  being  allowed  to  dip  down  his  head 
and  secure  a  half-dry  husk  or  cob  which  some  Kiev 
pilgrim  or  harvest  tramp  had  dropped  in  the  road  after 
gnawing  off  the  grain.  By  diplomatically  playing  off 
this  inordinate  love  of  green  maize  against  his  stubborn 
sorrow  at  the  departure  of  his  chum,  I  eventually  suc- 
ceeded in  first  getting  him  to  lead,  and  at  length  even 
to  following  meekly  at  my  heels* 


MY  INTERPRE TER  RETURNS.  225 

At  first  it  was  necessary  to  carry  a  bunch  of  blades 
and  permit  him  to  get  a  nibble  at  tolerably  regular  in- 
tervals of  time,  as  I  walked  before  him  rein  in  hand, 
and  for  a  day  or  two  he  seemed  to  be  in  a  state  of 
mental  bewilderment,  as  though  unable  to  decide  be- 
tween the  old  love  of  his  friend  and  the  new  love  of 
Indian  corn.  By  the  third  day  of  the  new  experiment, 
however,  and  the  sixth  day  after  the  parting  at 
Kanseropol,  Indian  corn  had  completely  won  him  over, 
and  now  that  he  had  forgotten  his  old  companion  he 
seemed  to  have  resolved  on  making  up  to  the  only 
friend  he  now  had  to  turn  to,  the  owner  of  the  hand 
that  fed  him  blades  of  maize. 

The  road  I  was  now  traversing  led  to  the  considera- 
ble town  of  Nicopol  on  the  Dneiper.  Villages  and 
habitation  were  farther  apart  than  on  any  portion  of 
the  way  thus  far  traversed  ;  the  population  here  averag- 
ing but  about  fifteen  to  the  square  verst.  For  much 
of  the  way,  however,  the  land  was  under  cultivation, 
being  farmed  in  large  tracts  by  capitalists  and 
speculators. 

On  the  road  crowds  of  people  were  met  on  foot,  in 
holiday  costumes,  wending  their  way  from  Nicopol 
and  adjacent  villages  to  Ekaterinoslav.  All  carried 
bottles,  and  their  mission  was  to  attend  some  religious 
ceremony,  where  a  priest  would  bless  water  and  make 
it  holy  ;  the  bottles  were  for  the  purpose  of  earn  ing 
back  some  of  this  holy  water  to  their  homes.  The 
pilgrims  were  mostly  women  of  the  peasant  class,  and 
their  faces  were  a  remarkable  study.  They  were  nearly 
all  strong,  square-jawed  faces,  reminding  me  of  Indian 
squaws,  and  eloquent  of  great  powers  of  physical  endur- 


226  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


ance.  When  I  met  these  gangs  of  female  pilgrims,  it 
was  one  of  the  hottest  days  of  the  entire  ride.  The 
sun  seemed  as  fierce  as  in  India.  Yet  these  hardy 
females  trudged  along,  some  with  no  covering,  save 
that  provided  by  nature,  on  their  heads ;  others  with 
but  a  kerchief,  and  all  apparently  indifferent  to  its  rays. 
Many  of  them  I  met  whilst  halting  at  a  post-station ; 
and  so  indifferent  were  they  to  the  fierce  glare  of  the 
sun,  that  had  produced  so  demoralizing  an  effect  on  my 
Moscow-bred  companion,  that  when  they  stopped  at 
the  station  to  regale  themselves  with  the  bread  and 
hard-boiled  eggs  they  carried,  they  didn't  even  trouble 
to  sit  in  the  shade.  Moreover,  the  station-keeper, 
when  two  or  three  of  them  did  take  shelter  in  front  of 
his  house  in  the  only  shady  spot,  ordered  them  away 
on  the  grounds  that  he  wasn't  keeping  a  traktir. 

Here,  in  the  sturdy  powers  of  endurance  and  the 
great  patience  of  these  peasant  wives  and  mothers,  one 
seemed  to  be  in  intimate  touch  with  the  real  secret  of 
Russia's  strength  and  formidableness  .  as  a  military 
power.  Patience  under  difficulties  and  hardships  and 
the  power  to  endure  extreme  heat  and  cold,  and  to 
live  on  and  be  contented  with  the  coarsest  fare,  were 
traits  that  were  written  in  every  lineament  of  these 
women's  faces.  Such  women  breed  good  material  for 
soldiers  —  soldiers  capable  of  campaigning  without 
tents,  and  with  the  rudest  of  commissary  departments. 
It  is  on  these  negative  virtues  of  her  people  that  Rus- 
sia will  have  to  depend,  for  many  a  year  to  come,  to 
sustain  her  in  case  of  conflict  with  any  of  the  great 
Western  powers.  Here,  as  I  sat  on  the  shady  side  of 
the  post-station,  watching  these  women  seated  on  the 


MY  INTERPRETER  RETURNS. 


227 


ground  partaking  of  their  coarse  fare,  stoically  happy 
under  conditions  that  I,  who  had  roughed  it  in  India, 
Africa,  Afghanistan,  and  China,'  would  have  regarded 
as  the  height  of  indiscretion,  the  homely  boast  of  the 
Russians,  that,  "  what  is  death  to  the  foreigner  is  life 
to  a  Russian,"  came  home  to  me  in  its  full  signifi- 
cance. 

Here,  too,  was  fanaticism,  that  other  quality  which 
the  military  authorities  of  Russia  turn  to  good  account 
on  the  field  of  battle.  The  Russian  soldier  always 
fights  in  a  holy  as  well  as  a  national  cause,  and,  no  less 
than  the  Turk,  believes  that  death  on  the  field  of  bat- 
tle is  a  passport  to  paradise.  And  these,  their  wives, 
mothers,  and  sisters,  were  tramping  a  hundred  versts 
through  the  heat  and  dust,  in  preference  to  riding  by 
rail  or  boat,  because  they  believed  there  was  virtue  in 
undergoing  toil  to  get  the  holy  water. 

The  population  of  Nicopol,  or  the  business  part  of 
it,  seemed  to  consist  largely  of  Jews  and  Germans. 
The  hotel  was  kept  by  a  German  family,  and  was 
a  tremendous  improvement  on  the  native-managed 
caravanserai.  "  English  sprakcn  ?  "  said  the  worthy 
and  fairly  energetic  hostess.  "  Ah,  beefsteak  !  "  And 
fifteen  minutes  later  I  was  doing  ample  justice  to  a 
smoking  steak  and  a  bottle  of  lager  beer. 

My  road  from  Nicopol  was  down  the  eastern  bank 
of  the  Dneiper,  whose  waters  came  into  view  near  by,  to 
the  left,  many  times  a  day.  The  people  of  the  little 
villages  I  passed  through  were  inordinately  suspicious. 
Each  contained  a  sort  of  policeman  in  ordinary  peas- 
ant garb,  and  whose  only  badge  of  authority  seemed 
to  be  a  disk  of  tin  as  large  as  a  blacking-box,  stamped 


228 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


with  a  number,  and  which  was  suspended  from  the 
neck  with  a  yellow  cord. 

Ettabozaluk  was  the  name  of  the  hamlet  where  the 
first  sample  of  this  particular  brand  of  traveler-worriers 
came  into  the  theater  of  my  Russian  road  experiences. 
Drawing  rein  at  the  village  traktir,  in  the  middle  of  the 
forenoon,  in  quest  of  something  to  drink,  the  uncouth 
crowd  of  villagers  and  moujiks  that  are  always  loafing 
about  these  places  were  instantly  attracted  by  the 
appearance  of  an  evidently  foreign  horseman.  Com- 
ments, as  usual,  were  indulged  in  of  the  most  naive  m& 
unreserved  character.  The  more  officious  demanded 
to  see  my  "  billet,"  as  a  passport  is  called  in  Southern 
Russia. 

Seeing  that  there  was  no  officer  among  them,  I  re- 
fused to  gratify  a  curiosity  that  was  nine-tenths  sus- 
picion, and  merely  answered  that  I  was  an  American. 
Instead  of  allaying  their  suspicions,  this  immediately 
increased  them.  One  old  wiseacre  declared  triumph- 
antly that  it  was  quite  impossible  that  a  man  on  horse- 
back should  come  from  America,  because  he  had  heard 
that  between  that  country  and  Russland  there  was 
water.  A  second  took  quite  an  indignant  fit  of  sus- 
picion on  the  grounds  that  my  saddle  was  not  Ameri- 
can but  Circassian,  a  positive  proof  to  his  comprehen- 
sive brain  that  I  was  trying  to  deceive  them.  These 
two  subtle  discoveries  convinced  the  whole  assembly 
that  I  was  grossly  deceiving  them  in  saying  that  I  was 
an  American,  and  consequently  must  be  a  spy. 

"  What  was  I  doing  in  Russland  ?  " 

"  Oh,  admiring  it!"  ismahtrait ;  literally,  to  look). 
The  crowd  shook  their  heads.    What  kind  of  block- 


MY  INTERPRETER  RETURNS. 


229 


heads  did  I  suppose  them  to  be  to  believe  that  a 
foreigner  would  ride  on  horseback  through  Russia 
merely  to  see  it  ?  To  these  poor  wretches,  born  and 
bred  in  an  atmosphere  of  low,  crafty  suspicion  ;  nour- 
ished on  it  ;  educated  to  it  in  the  school  of  daily 
experience;  growing  old  in  its  baleful  shadow;  and 
by  the  time  they  reach  middle  age  hardened  in  it  to 
a  degree  that  disfigures  their  very  faces,  it  seemed 
altogether  ridiculous  that  a  foreigner  should  turn  up 
in  this  strange  manner  and  not  be  engaged  on  some 
sinister  mission. 

I  refused  to  truckle  to  their  impertinent  suspicions,  - 
however,  seeing  no  one  among  them  who  had  any 
police  authority  to  demand  one's  passport,  and  was 
about  riding  off,  when  they  seized  Texas  by  the  bridle. 
An  individual  then  stepped  forward  and  demanded  in 
a  tone  of  authority  to  see  my  passport.  There  was 
nothing  of  the  policeman  about  his  appearance,  how- 
ever, and  I  demanded  to  know  if  he  was  the  uriadnik. 
Fumbling  under  his  moujik's  coat,  he  then  produced 
the  disk  of  numbered  tin  and  the  yellow  cord  that 
proclaimed  him  an  official  of  some  peculiarly  humble 
degree,  but  nevertheless  an  official. 

Fit  companions,  indeed,  to  these  suspicious  villagers, 
seemed  another  class  of  inhabitants  that  now  began  to 
make  themselves  conspicuous  on  the  steppe.  These 
were  tremendous  flocks  of  geese,  which  were  encoun- 
tered feeding  about  the  fields  and  grassland,  miles 
away  from  any  human  habitation,  and  as  many  miles 
from  water.  They  belonged  to  villages  on  the  banks 
of  the  Dneiper,  and  flew  daily  back  and  forth  between 
these  distant  foraging  grounds  and  the  river. 


230  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Beyond  Novo  Veronsofka  the  country  became  more 
and  more  thinly  inhabited.  Uncultivated  steppe 
characterized  the  greater  part  of  the  way,  and  big 
herds  of  horses  and  cattle,  and  flocks  of  sheep,  began  to 
be  the  most  prominent  feature  of  the  day's  ride.  The 
only  habitations  seen  in  a  day's  ride  would  be  the  post- 
stations,  from  twelve  to  twenty-five  versts  apart  ;  and 
across  the  steppe,  off  the  road,  the  stone-walled  houses 
of  the  ranchmen.  These  ranch-houses,  the  headquar- 
ters of  the  herds  and  flocks,  were  more  like  big  stone 
barns,  and  attached  to  them  were  square-walled  kraals 
for  the  cattle.  Now  and  then,  however,  where  a 
wealthy  landlord  and  cattle  owner  lived  on  his  own 
estate,  some  pretense  to  embellishment  would  be  seen 
in  the  form  of  ornamental  gateways,  or  a  porch  to  the 
house. 

On  wheat-growing  estates  were  now  seen  threshing- 
machines  and  steam  engines,  denoting  that  the  land 
of  moujiks  with  small  holdings  had  given  place  to  large 
proprietors  who  could  afford  expensive  machinery. 
The  straw  was  often  built  into  big  hollow  squares  for 
sheltering  cattle  in  winter  ;  and,  in  the  shimmering 
heat  of  the  day,  mirages  would  convert  such  as  were 
a  couple  of  miles  away,  across  the  level  steppe,  into 
cities  and  fortifications. 

An  amusing,  though  often  very  annoying  feature  of 
the  day's  experiences,  would  now  be  a  curious  spirit  of 
hostility,  displayed  by  the  incumbents  of  the  post- 
stations.  These  gentlemen  seemed  to  think  that  I 
was  setting  a  dangerous  example  to  the  traveling  com- 
munity by  riding  my  own  horse  instead  of  hiring  them 
to  convey  me  from  one  station  to  another,  as  had  been 


M  Y  IN  TERPRE  TER  RE  TURNS. 


231 


the  custom  from  time  immemorial  in  that  part  of  the 
country.  Some  treated  me  with  brusque  inhospitality  ; 
others  endeavored  to  convince  me  of  the  superior  ad- 
vantages of  traveling  by  post.  With  my  own  horse  I 
could  only  ride  forty  or  fifty  versts  a  day,  whilst  by 
changing  horses  at  every  stanitza  I  might  make  more 
than  a  hundred,  etc. 

It  was  with  the  utmost  difficulty  that  hay  or  oats 
were  to  be  procured,  except  by  bribery  in  the  form  of 
exorbitant  prices.  Texas  and  I  were  true  soldiers  of 
fortune  these  memorable  days,  and  on  down  through 
the  Crimea.  To-day  a  feast,  to-morrow  a  famine,  for- 
sooth, though  feasts  came  to  him  oftener  than  to  his 
rider,  since  oats  were  nearly  always  to  be  obtained  by 
means  of  extra  money,  whilst  decent  human  food  was 
out  of  the  question  except  in  a  city.  There  were  times 
when  Texas  had  to  dine  the  best  he  could  off  the 
scanty  tufts  of  wire-grass  on  the  droughty  Crimean 
steppe,  whilst  his  mast.er,  because  he  also  was  not 
herbivorous,  came  in  for  no  dinner  at  all. 

The  post-boys  or  yemchiks,  at  the  station-houses, 
were  an  improvement  on  their  employers,  the  "  Ka- 
zans,"  in  their  demeanor,  regarding  a  person  riding 
his  own  horse,  as  a  curiosity  rather  than  a  dangerous 
innovation.  The  chief  concern  of  the  yemchicks  was 
largess  for  looking  after  Texas.  One  evening  a  \ cm- 
chick  looked  after  him  so  well  that  he,  in  conjunction 
with  a  nest  of  outraged  wasps,  created  something  of 
a  circus  in  the  yard.  The  yemchik  tied  him  to  a 
sleigh  that  had  been  standing  in  a  corner  untouched 
since  the  previous  winter.  On  the  under  side  of  the 
sleigh,  unknown  to  the  yemchik,  a  colony  of  wasps 


232  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 

had  built  their  house.  Before  he  had  been  tied  up 
five  minutes,  one  of  the  wasps,  regarding  Texas  as  an 
intruder,  sallied  out  and  stung  him  on  the  nose  ;  and 
the  commotion  that  followed  brought  the  entire  swarm 
about  his  ears.  Texas  started  across  the  yard  with 
the  sleigh  in  no  ceremonious  fashion,  and  would  prob- 
ably have  injured  himself  seriously  had  the  sleigh  been 
equal  to  the  knocking  about.  Luckily  it  was  rotten, 
however,  and  breaking  away  from  it,  he,  after  consid- 
erable rolling  and  kicking,  came  running  to  me. 

A  day's  rest  was  indulged  in  at  Berislav,  where  the 
Dneiper  was  crossed  on  a  pontoon  bridge.  Berjslav 
is  a  dead-and-alive  town  with  one  roughly  paved  street 
that  the  people  use  for  a  promenade  in  the  evening. 
The  whole  town  apparently  went  to  sleep  about  ten 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  woke  up  again  at  four  in 
the  afternoon  for  the  purpose  of  drinking  tea.  Busi- 
ness must  have  been  transacted,  I  suppose,  if  there 
was  any  to  transact,  before  ten  and  after  four.  The 
symptoms  of  the  afternoon  awakening  were  boys  com- 
ing from  every  shop  in  town,  to  the  apology  for  a  hotel 
at  which  I  was  staying,  with  blue  enameled  kettles  for 
hot  water  to  make  tea.  The  hotel-keeper  did  a  roar- 
ing trade  in  hot  water  at  two  kopecks  a  kettle,  but  he 
was  not  overburdened  with  guests.  The  only  patrons 
that  haunted  his  establishment  whilst  I  was  there  were 
moujiks  from  the  country,  who  provided  their  own  food, 
tea,  and  sugar,  as  well  as  feed  for  their  horses.  The 
amount  one  of  these  customers  would  contribute  to 
the  income  of  the  establishment  would  be  about  twenty 
kopecks  during  the  day,  paid  for  hot  water,  and  the  priv- 
ilege of  yard-room  for  his  team  and  wagon. 


MY  INTERPRETER  RETURNS. 


233 


The  proprietor  of  this  lively  concern  was  an  amiable, 
and,  for  a  Russian,  fairly  honest  young  man,  who 
kindly  informed  me  that  serfage  was  abolished  through- 
out the  Czar's  dominions;  speaking  as  though  he  were 
communicating  a  piece  of  news  that  I,  being  a  for- 
eigner, had  perhaps  not  heard  of,  though  the  emanci- 
pation must  have  taken  place  soon  after  he  came  into 
the  world. 

Shortly  after  crossing  the  Dneiper  I  happened  on  an 
old  acquaintance  that  I  had  last  seen  in  Persia,  in  the 
form  of  the  neat  iron  posts  and  triple  wires  of  the 
Indo-European  Telegraph  Line. 

From  London  to  Calcutta,  overland,  by  the  most 
direct  practicable  route  is  somewhere  near  8000  miles. 
Stationed  here  and  there  at  intervals  of  a  few  hundred 
miles  all  along  this  distance  are  little  groups,  or  solitary 
British  subjects,  the  links  of  an  active  chain  of  politi- 
cal and  commercial  sympathy  connecting  two  widely 
separated  capitals  of  the  British  Empire,  the  home 
capital  and  the  metropolis  of  India.  The  links  of  this 
great  Anglo-Indian  chain  are  strung  out  through 
Belgium,  Germany,  and  European  Russia  to  Odessa ; 
thence  through  the  Crimean  Peninsula  to  Kertch  ; 
down  through  Circassia  and  Georgia  to  Tiflis ;  across 
Transcaucasia  and  the  Persia  frontier  to  Tabreez. 
From  Tabreez  they  continue  on  eastward  to  Teheran. 
At  the  Persian  capital  the  Indo-European  line  con- 
nects with  the  line  owned  and  operated  by  the  Indian 
government.  Practically  one  is  but  a  continuation  of 
the  other,  however,  and  from  Teheran  the  little  groups 
of  Englishmen  extend  on  south  to  Bushire,  passing 
through   the  cities  of   Ispahan  and    Shiraz.  From 


234  THRO  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUS  TA  JVC 


Bushire  they  follow  along  the  Mekran  coast  through 
Beloochistan  into  India  north  of  Karachi,  where  the 
chain,  which  has  been  on  foreign  soil  from  the  west 
coast  of  Belgium,  debouches  upon  British  territory. 

These  numerous  groups  and  isolated  subjects  of 
Victoria,  Queen  of  England,  Empress  of  India,  are 
simply  the  working  force  of  the  largest  and  finest- 
equipped  telegraph  line  in  the  world.  From  the  Bel- 
gian coast  to  distant  India,  there  stretches  one  con- 
tinuous long  row  of  splendid  iron  poles,  climbing  over 
rugged  mountains  in  the  Caucasus;  stretched  out 
across  the  level  Persian  deserts  in  long,  straight 
reaches;  protruding  like  black,  tapering  stems  from  the 
white,  glaring  sand-waves  of  Beloochistan.  My  first 
acquaintance  with  this  remarkable  telegraph  line  was 
made  at  Tabreez,  during  my  bicycle  ride  around  the 
world.  In  riding  from  Constantinople,  through  Ana- 
tolia and  Koordistan,  I  had  been  accompanied  from 
time  to  time  by  stretches  of  dilapidated  Turkish  line, 
usually  one  wire  mounted  on  rough  poles,  twice  as  far 
apart  as  they  ought  to  be  and  leaning  toward  all  points 
of  the  compass.  At  Erzeroum  I  seemed  to  have  got 
beyond  the  territory  covered  by  the  Turkish  system, 
and  had  ridden  several  days'  journey  into  Persia. 

It  was  a  wild,  barbarous  country  about  the  Turko- 
Persian  border,  inhabited  chiefly  by  nomad  Koords, 
and  I  missed  even  the  occasional  welcome  company  of 
the  Turkish  telegraph  line.  Its  disappearance  seemed 
like  casting  off  the  last  strand  of  Western  civiliza- 
tion. 

At  that  time  I  hardly  expected  to  see  another  tele- 
graph line  until  I  should  reach  Japan,  my  intention 


M  Y  INTER  PRE  1 ER  RE  Tl  RNS. 


235 


being  to  reach  the  Pacific  through  Turkestan  and 
China. 

Suddenly  one  day,  when  nearing  Tabreez,  I  saw 
away  off  on  the  desert  a  sight  that  made  me  blink  and 
rub  my  eyes  to  make  sure  that  it  was  not  a  mere  opti- 
cal illusion  I  was  looking  at.  The  deserts  of  Persia  are 
famous  for  producing  bogus  objects — mirages  of  lakes 
and  waving  palms;  of  lovely  castles,  and  similar  fasci- 
nating scenes ;  but  this  time  it  was  none  of  these.  Miles 
away  to  the  north,  seemingly  suspended  in  mid-air,  was 
a  league-long  row  of  telegraph  poles,  straight  as  a  die, 
even  as  the  pickets  of  a  garden  fence. 

As  I  drew  nearer,  the  line  assumed  more  definite 
form.  Its  marvelous  symmetry,  I  then  discovered,  was 
not  the  enchantment  of  distance,  but  a  solid  reality 
in  English  iron,  with  the  name  of  the  contracting  firm 
stamped  on  the  poles.  Every  pole  tapering  from  a 
circumference  of  twenty  inches  at  the  bottom  to  six  or 
eight  at  the  top,  and,  across  the  dead-level  wastes  of  the 
Persian  plains,  set  up  as  evenly  and  perpendicularly  as 
they  might  have  been  in  Hyde  Park.  It  is  worth 
noting,  perhaps,  by  the  way,  that  the  English  always 
take  particular  pains  to  have  everything  of  this  kind 
very  superior  in  the  East ;  it  is  a  perpetual  source  of 
wonder  and  admiration  to  the  natives;  a  standing  ad- 
vertisement of  England's  wealth,  power,  and  ability 
to  the  multitude  who  have  no  other  way  of  learn- 
ing. 

From  Tabreez  I  was  able  to  follow  this  infallible 
guide  into  Teheran.  Often  I  could  see  it  stretching 
ahead  of  me  mile  after  mile,  the  poles  so  even  that  they 
seemed  not  to  vary  an  inch,  and  disappearing  in  the 


236 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


heavens  at  the  farther  end  by  the  curious  legerdemain 
of  the  desert.  The  aeolian  music  of  its  triple  wires,  as 
the  desert  breezes  played  through  them,  and  the  mes- 
sages flashed  past  from  India  to  England,  from  England 
to  India— how  companionable  it  was,  that  bit  of  civili- 
zation in  a  barbarous  country,  only  those  who  have  been 
similarly  placed  know. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


ON  THE  CRIMEAN  STEPPES. 

THE  country  between  the  crossing  of  the  Dneiper 
and  the  narrow  entrance  to  the  Crimean  Peninsu- 
la, at  Perekop,  is  a  dead-level,  treeless  steppe.  Broad 
areas  are  devoted  to  the  production  of  wheat,  and  long 
bullock  trains  were  met,  hauling  the  newly  harvested 
crop  to  Berislav  for  transportation  down  the  Dneiper 
to  Odessa.  Bullocks,  wagons,  and  drivers  looked  like 
animated  shapes  of  dust  ;  the  drivers  either  liked  it  or 
were  too  indifferent  and  lazy  to  care  about  keeping  out 
of  the  dense  clouds  that  the  oxen  kicked  up  as  they 
crawled  along. 

Near  the  river  bottom  were  melon  gardens,  and  it 
seemed  to  me  that  there  was  about  one  watcher  to 
every  dozen  vines,  from  which  the  reader  is  at  liberty 
to  draw  his  or  her  own  most  charitable  inferences  as 
to  the  character  of  the  passers-by. 

On  the  wild  steppe  were  numerous  flocks  of  merino 
sheep  in  charge  of  Tartar  shepherds  ;  and  there  now 
began  to  appear  wells  for  watering  them,  operated  by 
bullocks  hauling  a  rope  wound  round  an  enormous 
drum. 

These  wells  on  the  Southern  steppes  are  different 
from  anything  the  writer  had  ever  seen  before.  They 
are  the  places  of  rendezvous  on  the  steppe  for  all  sorts 
«md  conditions  of  people,  who  collect  about  them  for 
water  and  to  rest  during  the  heat  of  the  summer's 

237 


238  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


day.  To  the  wayfarer,  they  are  the  oasis  of  the 
steppe  ;  and  the  stages  of  his  journey  are  from  one 
well  to  another. 

At  noon  on  a  hot  summer's  day  there  may  be  as 
many  as  fifty  people  about  one  of  these  wells,  not  one 
of  whom  will  be  there  at  sundown.  There  may  be 
ten  thousand  merino  sheep  and  a  dozen  Tartar  shep- 
herds, who  will  be  snoozing  the  hot  hours  away  inside 
their  curious  tent-carts,  standing  in  the  midst  of  their 
respective  flocks.  They  have  shepherd  dogs  that  have 
more  wool  on  them  than  the  wooliest  sheep  in  the 
flock.  Some  of  these  odd-looking  canines  are  so 
loaded  down  with  wool,  which  grows  particularly 
heavy  on  the  legs,  that  they  almost  seem  incapable  of 
waddling  along.  Wool-growing  is  one  of  the  principal 
industries  of  the  southern  steppes,  and  the  favorite 
sheep  seems  to  be  the  merino. 

On  Wednesday  morning,  August  6,  I  reached  the 
town  of  Perekop,  and  was  gratified  by  a  glimpse  of 
the  Black  Sea — a  welcome  enough  sight  after  the 
monotony  of  the  drouthy  steppe.  Perekop  was  an 
abominably  hot  and  dusty  hole,  containing  not  one 
redeeming  feature  beyond  its  nearness  to  the  sea.  A 
few  wooden  shops  and  vodka-drinking  dens,  houses,  gov- 
ernment buildings,  and  a  postayali  dvor  were  scattered 
over  an  area  of  gray,  verdureless  soil,  in  size  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  number  of  inhabitants  dwelling  on 
it — this  was  Perekop.  Situated  on  the  narrowest  part 
of  the  isthmus  that  connects  the  Crimean  Peninsula 
with  the  body  of  Russia,  one  may  stand  on  the  roof  of 
one  of  its  houses  and  see  the  Black  Sea  on  one  side 
and  the  Azov  on  the  other. 


OAT  THE  CRIMEAN  STEPPES. 


239 


The  keeper  of  the  postayali  dvor  was  a  son  of  Israel, 
who,  instead  of  receiving  me  with  the  traditional  cor- 
diality of  the  boniface  in  dealing  with  a  traveler  who 
desires  to  become  his  guest,  regarded  me  with  such  a 
panic  of  suspicion  that  he  immediately  shuffled  off 
across  the  street  and  reported  my  arrival  and  foreign 
appearance  to  the  pristav.  Thus  it  happened  that, 
ten  minutes  after  reaching  Perekop,  a  police  officer 
walked  into  the  stable,  and  before  I  had  fairly  relieved 
Texas  of  his  saddle,  demanded  my  passport  and  took 
possession  of  my  saddle-bags. 

Books  and  papers,  even  private  letters,  were  criti- 
cally examined  by  the  pristav,  who,  however,  not 
being  equal  to  English,  could  make  nothing  of  them. 

The  only  thing  he  understood  was  the  paper  I  had 
obtained  from  the  Governor  of  Ekaterinoslav.  He 
hesitated  some  little  time  over  this,  probably  suspi- 
cious that  it  was  a  forgery,  but  finally  contented  him- 
self with  making  a  copy  of  it ;  and  after  worrying  his 
brain  for  half  an  hour  about  my  camera,  reluctantly 
allowed  me  to  proceed. 

I  was  now  in  the  Crimea  ;  and  among  the  experiences 
of  the  first  day's  ride  in  it  was  the  refusal  of  a  landed 
nobleman  to  grant  me  the  most  trifling  expression  of 
courtesy  or  hospitality  for  the  night.  I  arrived  at  this 
place  at  dark.  He  was  superintending  the  watering  of 
live  stock  at  the  well,  and  by  way  of  a  hint  I  rode  Texas 
up  to  the  trough  and  watered  him.  Seeing  that  the 
gentleman  made  no  offer  of  hospitality,  I  requested  the 
privilege  of  tying  Texas  up  in  his  yard,  and  sleeping 
there  myself  for  the  night. 

"  This  is  not  a  postayali  dvor,"  said  the  nobleman. 


240 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


I  explained  that  I  had  not  mistaken  him  for  a  station- 
keeper,  but  that  it  was  now  dark,  my  horse  was  tired, 
the  road  unfamiliar  to  me,  and  the  post-station  a  long- 
way  off. 

"  This  is  not  a  house  for  travelers,"  he  reiterated,  and 
turned  on  his  heel  by  way  of  bringing  the  matter  to  an 
end. 

The  night  came  on  very  dark,  and  so,  within  a  couple 
of  versts  of  this  gentleman's  place,  I  was  compelled  to 
tie  Texas,  supperless,  to  a  telegraph  pole,  and  spread- 
ing my  rug  on  the  ground  beside  him,  also  supperless, 
wait  till  morning. 

Nearly  all  travelers  who  have  spent  any  length  of 
time  in-  Russia  agree  that  the  Russians  are  hospitable. 
The  lavish  hospitality  of  the  country  houses  of  wealthy 
Russians,  and  the  ostentatious  plenty  of  the  Russian 
merchant's  table  when  guests  are  in  his  house,  have 
been  attested  by  more  than  one  English  and  American 
traveler.  Wallace  tells  of  being  the  guest  in  a  mer- 
chant's house,  where  it  was  difficult  to  obtain  anything 
simpler  than  sturgeon  and  champagne  ;  and  the  same 
authority,  treating  this  time  more  particularly  of  noble- 
men's houses,  says:  "  Of  all  the  foreign  countries  in 
which  I  have  traveled,  Russia  certainly  bears  off  the 
palm  in  all  that  regards  hospitality.  Every  spring  I 
found  myself  in  possession  of  a  large  number  of  invita- 
tions from  landed  proprietors  in  different  parts  of  the 
country,  and  a  great  part  of  the  summer  was  generally 
spent  in  wandering  about  from  one  country  house  to 
another." 

In  spite  of  my  own  experiences,  then,  the  Russians  are 
hospitable.    There  is  no  doubt  that  a  foreigner  who 


ON  THE  CRIMEAN  STEPPES. 


241 


goes  to  Russia  and  takes  the  trouble  to  make  himself 
conspicuous  and  agreeable  in  St.  Petersburg  drawing- 
rooms  in  the  winter,  will,  like  the  gentleman  I  have 
just  quoted,  receive  many  invitations  to  country  houses, 
and  in  them  meet  with  most  hospitable  receptions. 

This  is  hospitality,  of  a  truth  ;  but  there  is  a  higher 
form  of  hospitality  than  this  ;  and  it  is  to  this  higher 
interpretation  of  the  word  and  its  meaning  that  my 
own  experiences  must  be  applied. 

Primal  hospitality,  as  the  writer  understands  it,  is 
not  so  much  the  readiness  to  receive  into  your  house 
a  gentleman  who  has  made  a  favorable  impression  on 
you  at  a  social  gathering,  as  a  willingness  to  entertain 
the  passing  stranger,  in  need  of  assistance,  whom  you 
never  saw  before,  and  never  expect  to  see  again.  This 
is  the  test  that  is  applicable  to  a  country  where  dis- 
tances are  great  and  the  traveler  liable  to  find  himself 
fatigued  or  benighted  where  public  accommodation  is 
not  to  be  found. 

Possibly  this  sort  of  hospitality  prevails  in  Russia, 
as  well  as  the  secondary  stage  ;  which  might  be  termed 
its  European,  or  civilized  expression,  as  against  its 
Asiatic  interpretation.  I  can  only  say  that  if  so,  it 
was  my  misfortune  to  see  absolutely  nothing  of  it,  un- 
til, during  the  last  two  or  three  days'  ride,  I  came  in 
contact  with  the  Crimean  Tartars.  We  were  hospitably 
entertained  by  Count  Tolstoi' ;  and  near  Kharkoff,  as 
earlier  pages  explain,  we  stumbled  upon  the  family  of 
a  Rostoff  shipping  agent,  who  were  summering  there, 
and  who  likewise  showed  us  hospitality. 

But  apart  from  these  two  cases  of  exceptional  cir- 
cumstances, we  received  not  so  much  as  a  solitary  glass 


242  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


of  milk  from  one  end  of  Russia  to  the  other  without 
buying  it.  This,  among  the  poverty-hardened  moujiks 
was,  of  course,  not  be  expected,  nor  desired.  But  in 
the  middle  of  a  scorching  hot  day,  I  have  ridden  up 
to  a  nobleman's  house  in  Southern  Russia,  and  with  a 
voice  husky  from  thirst  inquired  for  milk,  where  there 
was  evidently  no  lack  of  an  abundance  of  that  article, 
and  received  a  negative  answer,  embittered  with  a 
stare  of  mingled  curiosity  and  suspicion. 

Mayhap  it  was  all  owing  to  their  miserable  suspi- 
cions of  me  that  their  reception  was  so  inhospitable  and 
boorish  ;  but,  whatever  the  cause,  it  upset  completely 
all  my  preconceived  ideas,  as  well  as  the  preconceived 
ideas  of  their  Moscow  compatriot,  my  companion,  who 
likewise  was  disappointed  in  this  same  manner  north 
of  Ekaterinoslav. 

The  day  after  being  turned  away  from  the  big  land- 
owner's door  to  pass  the  night  supperless  on  the 
steppe,  I  reached  a  wayside  traktir.  The  principal 
article  of  consumption  there  was  vodka,  and  the  cus- 
tomers were  a  mixed  company  of  Russian  and  Tartar 
shepherds.  Besides  vodka  were  black  bread  and  the 
inevitable  barrel  of  cucumbers  in  brine.  These  precious 
commodities  were  kept  in  a  corner  of  the  room  which 
was  railed  off  from  the  rest  by  means  of  perpendicular 
wooden  bars.  Behind  these  bars,  looking  through,  like 
a  prisoner  in  a  cell,  was  the  proprietor,  a  black-whisk- 
ered Semitic-looking  gentleman,  with  a  nose  as  purple 
and  ripe-looking  as  a  luscious  plum  :  a  nose  that  must 
have  cost  him  barrels  of  vodka  to  bring  to  such  a  state 
of  perfection  ;  and  which  was  seen  to  singular  advan- 
tage when  he  thrust  it  through  the  wooden  bars. 


ON  THE  CRIMEAN  STEPPES. 


243 


The  Russians  and  Tartars  sat  carousing  around  rude 
wooden  tables,  their  feast  consisting  of  the  above- 
mentioned  epicurean  ingredients.  Now  and  then  the 
purple-nosed  proprietor  would  pass  out  through  the 
bars  a  refilled  bottle  of  vodka,  a  handful  of  squashy 
cucumbers,  with  the  brine  streaming  through  his  fingers, 
or  a  piece  of  bread.  These  Tartar  shepherds  have 
yielded  to  the  influence  of  their  Russian  surround- 
ings, and,  though  still  nominally  Mohammedans,  drink 
vodka  as  freely  as  the  moujiks.  While  I  was  there,  an 
ancient  Tartar  dame  drove  up  in  a  ramshackle  one- 
horse  telega,  bringing  a  sack  of  newly  threshed  wheat 
to  swap  for  vodka.  She  was  as  shriveled  as  a  mummy, 
and  must  have  been  eighty  years  old. 

In  the  eyes  of  the  Tartars  it  was  a  recommendation 
to  their  good  will  that  I  had  been  to  Stamboul  and 
knew  a  few  words  of  Turkish. 

Even  here,  in  this  rude  company,  the  difference  in 
the  two  races  wras  oddly  conspicuous  to  the  casual 
looker-on.  The  vodka  was  paid  for  chiefly  by  the  Tar- 
tars and  consumed  chiefly  by  the  Russians.  A  boozer 
of  the  latter  nationality,  be  he  never  so  fuddled, 
always  took  care  to  pour  down  his  throat  about  two 
glasses  to  his  Tartar  comrade's  one,  out  of  the  bottle 
that  had  been  ordered  through  the  bars  by  the  Tartar. 
These  Crim  Tartars,  indeed,  seemed  to  be  a  particularly 
generous-souled  set  of  people  so  far  as  my  passing  ex- 
perience of  them  enabled  me  to  judge. 

Another  hot,  dreary  day  across  the  level  steppe,  on 
which,  however,  was  seen  at  one  point  the  agreeable 
oasis  of  a  German  colonist  settlement, — a  village  of  neat 
white  houses,  with  red  tiles,  and  an  avenue  of  trees 


244 


THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUST  A  NG. 


along  the  streets  ;  and  on  the  following  morning  there 
appeared  on  the  southern  horizon  the  irregular  out- 
lines of  the  Yaila  Mountains.  It  was  the  landmark 
indicating  the  end  of  my  ride  on  horseback. 

Though  there  is  nothing  in  the  shape  of  a  mountain 
all  the  way  from  the  frozen  limits  of  the  Russian 
Empire  to  the  north,  on  the  longitudinal  line  of  my 
journey,  my  last  two  days'  ride  would  be  over  moun- 
tain roads.  The  Yaila  Mountains  fringe  the  southern 
shore  of  the  Crimean  Peninsula,  which  in  all  other 
parts  was  as  monotonous  as  any  other  part  of  the  ride. 
The  mountains  were  as  welcome  a  sight  as  land  after  a 
long  sea  voyage  ;  so  welcome,  indeed,  that  a  sense  of 
depression,  born  of  the  monotony  of  the  steppe,  im- 
mediately gave  way  to  something  akin  to  the  enthusi- 
asm of  a  new  discovery.  "  Hail  !  blessed  mountains  !" 
was  the  mental  greeting  called  forth  by  their  first 
revelation  ;  the  truism,  that  our  appreciation  of  a 
thing  is  in  direct  proportion  to  its  scarcity,  applies  no 
less  to  mountains  than  to  any  other  object. 

In  these  mountains,  at  Yalta,  is  an  Imperial  palace, 
where  members  of  the  Imperial  family  sometimes 
reside,  coming  all  the  way  from  St.  Petersburg  to  enjoy 
the  luxury  of  mountain  scenery  and  air. 

They  seemed  yet  more  to  be  appreciated  as  I  drew 
near  them  in  the  evening,  and  found  that  they  had 
conjured  into  existence,  rows  of  stately  poplar  trees, 
orchards  of  luscious  fruit,  and  acres  of  productive 
melon  gardens  by  the  roadside,  where  one  could  halt 
and  obtain  from  the  Tartar  melon  gardeners  the 
choicest  of  "karpooses." 

Here  it  was,  too,  that  I  once  again  experienced,  at 


ON  THE  CRIMEAN  STEPPES. 


245 


the  hands  of  the  Tartars,  that  simple,  spontaneous 
hospitality  which  had  charmed  me,  years  before,  among 
the  Turks  of  Asia  Minor.  The  day  before,  I  was 
among  a  grasping,  overcharging  set  of  Crimean  Jews, 
who  had  charged  me  for  the  privilege  of  watering 
Texas  at  their  well  ;  now  I  was  invited  to  halt,  and 
help  myself  to  melons,  by  a  Tartar  who  refused  money 
when  I  offered  to  pay. 

The  remainder  of  the  ride  to  Sevastopol  was  over 
mountainous,  stony  roads,  for  the  most  part  a  govern- 
ment military  chaussee.  This  c/iauss/e  connects  Sevas- 
topol with  Simferopol,  the  governmental  capital  of  the 
Crimea,  and  is  in  slow  process  of  extension  to  the 
north.  The  idea  is  to  eventually  connect  it  with  the 
road  I  had  followed  from  Moscow  to  Kharkoff. 

Though  hilly  and  frightfully  hot,  the  novelty  of  the 
change  was  keenly  appreciated,  though  probably  less 
so  by  Texas  than  his  rider.  His  compensation  for  the 
hills  he  had  to  climb  was  the  novel  luxury  of  slices  of 
watermelon,  and  the  rinds  of  the  same,  which  he 
seemed  to  relish  as  keenly  as  the  green  maize  with 
which,  a  few  days  before,  I  had  cajoled  him  into  for- 
getting Sascha's  horse  and  warming  toward  his  master. 
By  this  time  the  remarkably  social  disposition  which 
had  formerly  distinguished  him  in  his  demeanor  to- 
ward his  equine  associate  had  developed  into  some- 
thing more  than  mere  sociability  toward  the  only  com- 
panion he  now  had  to  claim  his  attentions. 

Whether  it  was  the  magic  influence  of  green  maize 
and  slices  of  watermelon,  or  because  I  had,  during  the 
past  few  days,  fed  him  chiefly  on  barley,  which  he 
liked  better  than  oats,  was  past  finding  out  ;  but  he 


246 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


had  now  become  so  affectionate  that  he  would  follow 
me  about  like  a  dog — always  excepting  when  I  at- 
tempted to  lead  the  way  across  a  bridge  or  toward  a 
stream  of  water  when  he  wasn't  thirsty.  The  horror 
of  wetting  his  feet  and  of  crossing  bridges,  which  he 
had  exhibited  the  first  day  out  from  Moscow,  was  at 
the  end  of  the  journey  as  much  of  a  quarrel  between 
us  as  at  the  beginning. 

Occasionally  the  road  led  through  charming  little 
valleys,  with  gurgling  streams,  devoted  to  the  cultiva- 
tion of  pears,  plums,  and  grapes.  Vineyards  were  sur- 
rounded with  stone  walls,  the  handiwork  of  Greek 
proprietors,  of  which  there  were  a  fair  sprinkling 
among  the  population.  Nicopol,  Melitopol,  Simfero- 
pol, and  the  many  other  'opols  of  this  part  of  Russia 

told  the  story  of  the  old  Byzantium  Empire. 

Beside  the  Greeks  and  Tartars,  gypsies  were  now  en- 
countered, camps  of  basket-makers  by  the  wayside  un- 
derneath the  trees.  The  women  were  importunate  to 
sell  me  a  basket  or  tell  my  fortune ;  the  men  to  buy,  sell, 
or  swap  a  horse.  The  children  ran  alongside  Texas 
begging  for  kopecks  ;  the  very  doubles  of  those  who, 
four  years  before,  had  raced  beside  my  bicycle  in  Hun- 
gary begging  for  kreutzers,  and  again  in  India,  for 
pice.  All  were  alike,  save  that  those  encountered  in 
India  had  darker  skins,  teeth  of  more  dazzling  white- 
ness, and  eyes  even  more  black  and  flashing  than  their 
relatives  of  Hungary  and  the  Crimea. 

Nor  was  the  muse  forgotten  by  the  good  genii  of 
these  magic  mountains.  Wherever  there  are  moun- 
tains, Greeks,  and  grapes,  the  wandering  minstrel 
appears  on  the  scene  as  a  necessary  part  of  the  local 


ON  THE  CRIMEAN  STEPPES. 


247 


coloring  of  the  picture.  The  noontide  halt  of  the  last 
day  but  one  of  the  ride  was  made  in  the  old  Tartar 
town  of  Bekchiserai,  where  the  population  is  now 
chiefly  Greek  and  Tartar.  Here  a  band  of  itinerant 
Greek  musicians  regaled  my  ears  with  the  only  music, 
save  of  military  bands,  that  had  been  heard  on  the 
journey. 

All  through  Malo  Russia,  the  land  of  the  balalaika, 
not  a  solitary  twang  of  that  instrument  had  been 
heard;  the  dead  level  of  the  eternal  steppes  seemed  to 
have  found  an  echo  in  the  monotony  of  the  people's 
pursuits,  which  were  the  gratification  of  their  animal 
wants.  After  harvest,  possibly,  the  Little  Russian  pic- 
ture might  have  brightened  somewhat ;  but  the 
absorbing  concern  of  the  population,  as  they  came 
under  my  observation  was,  monotonously, — work,  food, 
and  money. 

But  the  mountains  introduced  the  pleasure-loving 
Greeks;  and  so  here  at  Bekchiserai  were  musicians  at 
mid-day,  and  the  little  girls  dancing  graceful  Hellenic 
measures  to  the  playing.  There  was  an  element  of  doubt 
as  to  whether  this  was  altogether  an  improvement, 
however,  on  the  Little  Russians,  from  their  own 
standpoint,  so  much  as  it  was  from  mine  ;  unless, 
indeed,  the  main  object  of  life  is  the  seeking  of  but- 
terfly pleasures.  As  compared  with  the  children  of 
the  Russian  villages,  the  little  Greek  girls  were  amus- 
ingly precocious.  Small  misses  of  eight  and  ten  danced 
and  posed  in  rivalry  for  the  applause  of  the  lookers-on, 
as  soubrettes  on  the  stage  ;  and  some  of  them  smoked 
cigarettes,  producing  paper  and  tobacco  from  their 
pockets  to  roll  them. 


248 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


At  Bekc'hiserai,  and  other  neighboring  places,  were 
old  Tartar  tombs  and  mosques.  Both  Perekop  and 
Simferopol  have  Tartar  quarters,  with  mosques  and 
minarets.  The  latter  are  neither  tall  nor  conspicuous, 
however,  being  completely  overshadowed  by  the 
splendid  Russian  churches.  It  seemed  rather  rough  on 
the  Tartars,  too,  as  showing  scant  consideration  for  the 
religious  susceptibilities  of  a  subject  people,  to  find 
some  of  the  domes  of  the  Orthodox  churches  orna- 
mented with  devices  proclaiming  the  triumph  of  the 
Cross  over  the  Crescent.  This  sort  of  thing  is  flaunted 
in  the  face  of  any  Tartar  who  looks  at  a  Russian 
church  throughout  Russia  south  of  Kharkoff.  A 
favorite  device  is  a  Cross  towering  above  a  Crescent, 
with  Gabriel  perched  on  the  top  of  the  Cross  blowing 
his  trumpet. 

But  there  seems  to  be  no  friction  whatever  between 
the  two  races,  on  account  of  their  religious  differences; 
probably  owing  to  the  fact  that  no  proselyting  is 
attempted  on  either  side.  In  many  villages  of  the 
Crimea,  as  well  as  in  the  provinces  of  Samara  and 
Kazan  on  the  Volga,  one  side  of  the  street  is  Tartar, 
the  other  Russian  ;  and  the  two  rub  along  together  in 
perfect  harmony  without  actually  mixing  any  more 
than  is  necessary  for  the  transaction  of  business. 

It  was  in  such  a  village  as  this  that  I  passed  the  last 
night  on  the  ride ;  a  place  called  Baalbek,  about 
twenty-five  versts  from  Sevastopol.  I  had  been  loiter- 
ing at  a  Tartar  melon  garden  during  the  afternoon,  and 
reached  Baalbek  at  dark.  The  place  contained  no 
public  accommodation  for  man  and  beast  traveling  in 
an  independent  manner,  though  there  was  a  post- 


ON  THE  CRIMEAN  STEPPES. 


249 


station,  where  travelers  by  the  regular  Russian  post 
might  stay.  Here  the  proprietor,  a  Russian,  either 
from  suspicion  of  what  I  might  be,  or  from  prejudice 
because  I  was  riding  my  own  horse,  or  from  sheer  in- 
hospitality  and  indifference,  refused  either  to  sell  me 
any  feed  or  stable  room  for  Texas  for  the  night. 

On  the  opposite  side  of  the  street,  some  young  Tar- 
tars, who  were  drinking  coffee  in  front  of  a  little  coffee 
shop,  seeing  the  dilemma  of  a  passing  stranger,  came 
over  to  the  rescue  at  once.  They  had  neither  horse- 
feed  nor  stable  ;  but  one  of  them  led  Texas  away  to 
water,  then  tied  him  up  in  a  little  private  yard  on  their 
side  of  the  village  ;  and  another  skirmished  around 
and  obtained  a  bunch  of  hay.  Bread,  a  boiled  shceps- 
head,  and  coffee  were  obtained  for  supper,  and  I  was 
provided  with  a  rude  divan  in  the  coffee  shop  for  a  bed. 
I  had  at  length,  after  six  weeks  in  the  saddle,  arrived 
among  a  people  who  neither  regarded  me  with  sus- 
picion, nor  as  a  windfall  to  be  overcharged  and  finan- 
cially made  the  most  of. 

From  Bekchiserai  I  was  riding  over  historically  in- 
teresting ground.  Between  Simferopol  and  Baalbek 
I  watered  Texas  in  the  Alma,  a  small  stream  from 
which  the  well-known  battle  of  the  Crimean  War  de- 
rived its  name  ;  and  an  hour  or  two  from  Baalbek  the 
evidences  of  the  struggle  of  1854  were  on  every  hand. 
Dismantled  batteries  still  frowned  from  the  heights  of 
Inkerman,  as  though  the  ghosts  of  war  still  haunted 
the  fields  of  carnage,  reluctant  to  depart. 

Leaving  the  main  road,  I  picked  a  way  toward 
Sevastopol  over  the  rocky  heights  on  which  the  bat- 
teries and  trenches  of  the  allied  armies  had  invested 


250  THRO  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUS  TA  NG. 


the  city,  and  between  the  pits  in  which  the  soldiers 
had  been  buried. 

There  was  little  of  interest  to  arrest  the  attention 
here,  only  the  remains  of  the  trenches  and  half-moon 
mounds  of  the  batteries,  and  everywhere  the  sunken 
pits  of  rocks  and  bowlders  which  had  once  been  piled 
into  mounds  above  the  soldiers'  graves. 

By  ten  o'clock,  Monday,  August  11,  I  was  in  Se- 
vastopol, and  by  two  o'clock  of  the  same  day  had 
parted — not  without  a  pang  of  regret — with  Texas. 
Here  were  good  hotels,  steamships,  people  who  spoke 
English,  tourists,  and  all  the  comforts  of  a  civilized 
city.  I  was  no  longer  in  Russia,  but  only  on  that  sur- 
face of  it  which  tourists  glide  smoothly  over  by  means 
of  rail  and  steamer;  the  Russia  known  to  the  visitors 
who  get  their  impressions  of  it  by  a  trip  to  St.  Peters- 
burg and  Moscow  ;  or  by  making  the  "  grand  tour  "  by 
rail  and  by  steamer,  up  the  Volga. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


UP  THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 

SMOTHERING,  as  best  we  may,  a  sense  of  remorse 
and  ingratitude  at  the  necessity  of  leaving  in  the 
hands  of  a  Sevastopol  horse  dealer,  the  gallant  little 
horse  that  had  carried  me  more  than  a  thousand 
miles  across  the  Russian  steppes,  in  the  hottest  part  of 
the  year,  in  six  weeks, — June  20  to  August  11, — the 
reader  is  invited  to  glide  with  us  over  the  surface  of 
Russia,  eastward  and  northward,  to  take  a  peep  at  the 
great  fair  of  Nijni  Novgorod.  It  seems  good  to  get  off 
the  dreary  road,  to  get  away  from  the  heat  and  fatigue 
and  the  meager  food  of  the  Russian  road,  to  find  one's 
self  aboard  a  Black  Sea  steamer,  eating  good  dinners, 
and  sleeping  in  a  fairly  comfortable  bed.  All  things 
go  by  comparison,  and  though  the  little  Sevastopol 
steamer  was  by  no  means  an  Atlantic  grayhound  in  the 
matter  of  size,  accommodation,  or  speed,  the  change 
to  its  breezy  deck  from  a  Cossack  saddle  and  a  tired 
mustang,  was  a  jump  over  a  hundred  years  of  progress 
in  the  path  of  civilization. 

We  touched  at  Yalta  and  Kertch,  and  in  three  days 
and  a  half  landed  at  Taganrog.  I  stayed  at  Taganrog 
over  night,  and  carried  away  one  vivid  impression.  It 
was  the  sign  of  a  barber's  shop,  opposite  my  hotel, 
Englished,  and  it  read  :  "  Room  for  shaving  cutting 
hairs  and  bleed."    Our  way  to  Nijni  is  up  the  winding 

251 


252 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Don  to  Kalatch,  thence  by  a  short  railroad  to  the 
Volga,  and  up  that  Russian  Mississippi  to  our  destina- 
tion. 

Our  starting  point  is  Rostoff,  a  city  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Don.  The  boat  is  a  paddle-wheel  steamer  of 
about  two  hundred  tons  burden,  and,  like  the  spinster 
in  the  story,  of  uncertain  age.  Fresh  paint  gives  it, 
again  like  the  spinster  in  the  story,  the  bloom  of  youth, 
but  in  the  dining-saloon  you  discover  that  it  was  doing 
^service  on  the  Don  twenty-one  years  ago,  and  probably 
several  years  before.  In  1869  the  Emperor,  Alexan- 
der III,  then  Czarevitch,  ascended  the  Don  in  this 
steamer,  and  his  autograph,  commemorative  of  the 
event,  written  with  a  lead-pencil  on  a  plaster  of  Paris 
ground,  hangs  in  the  dining-saloon. 

Above  it  depends  a  big  steel  portrait  of  the  Czar, 
and  beside  it,  but  in  a  corner,  and  curiously  inconspicu- 
ous, is  a  tiny  ikon.  The  size  and  prominence  of  pic- 
tures of  the  Czar  and  the  smallness  and  unobtrusive 
position  of  the  ikons — those  two  features  of  every  Rus- 
sian public  hall  and  most  private  rooms,  representing 
"  God  and  the  Czar" — were  among  the  writer's  most 
vivid  impressions  of  South  Russia. 

In  a  former  chapter  something  was  said  of  the  emo- 
tional display  on  the  platforms  of  Russian  railways  at 
the  departure  of  a  train.  A  new  revelation  broke  over 
my  astonished  senses  upon  the  departure  of  our  steamer 
from  Rostoff.  Every  passenger  must  have  had  at  least 
twenty  friends  at  the  landing  to  see  him  or  her  off. 
And  the  flood  of  tears,  kisses,  laughter,  injunctions, 
admonitions,  and  all-around  emotion — how  can  mere 
words  depict  it?    One  would  think  these  people  were 


UP  THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 


253 


parting  for  all  eternity.  At  every  warning  of  the 
•  steamer's  whistle  the  departing  one  was  spasmodically 
seized  by  first  one,  then  from  six  to  twenty  others,  and 
kissed  as  though  he  or  she  were  the  only  person  in 
the  world  any  of  them  had  ever  loved.  And  after 
it  seemed  to  be  all  over,  and  the  roustabouts  were 
about  to  remove  the  gangway,  one  young  woman 
rushed  frantically  off  the  boat,  and,  in  defiance  of  the 
captain,  who  stamped  his  foot,  and  the  bell  that  con- 
tinued to  ring,  kissed  again  everybody  who  had  come 
down  to  see  her  off,  from  the  red-eyed  old  grand- 
mother to  the  blinking  and  unresponsive  infant  in  its 
nurse's  arms. 

The  Don  is  not  a  large  river,  though  its  volume  of 
water  is  considerably  larger  in  the  spring  than  in 
August  and  September.  In  August,  1890,  the  traveler 
could  shy  a  stone  across  it  at  most  points,  and  even 
this  is  apt  to  convey  a  false  idea  regarding  its  volume. 
Its  bed  is  a  tortuous  depression  in  a  flat  and  somewhat 
sandy  country,  and  its  shallowness  in  proportion  to  its 
width,  as  well  as  the  scenery,  or  absence  of  scenery,  on 
its  banks,  reminds  one  of  the  Platte  River  in  Nebraska. 
It  differs  from  the  Platte,  however,  in  having  much  less 
current.  To  this,  and  to  the  fact  that  it  traverses, a 
lower  and  somewhat  heavier  country,  it  owes  its  value 
as  a  navigable  river. 

Before  we  were  well  away  from  Rostoff  the  steamer 
had  to  begin  whistling  and  tooting  at  big  lumber- 
rafts  that  were  floating  down,  with  exasperating  pla- 
cidity and  indifference  to  up-coming  craft,  in  the  only 
channel  deep  enough  to  let  us  pass.  These  rafts  oc- 
cupy two  months  in  descending  the  river  from  Kalatch. 


254  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


They  contain  shipbuilding  timber  for  the  Black  Sea, 
telegraph  poles,  railway  ties,  logs,  and  firewood.  Two  « 
or  three  huts,  in  which  the  navigators  live,  are  built 
on  each,  and  besides  the  navigators  they  sometimes 
carry  wood-choppers,  who  convert  logs  into  firewood  on 
the  voyage  down. 

In  reply  to  our  tootings  and  the  threatening  gy- 
rations of  our  irascible  little  captain's  arms,  the  red- 
shirted  raftsmen  lazily  worked  huge  sweeps  that  are 
attached  to  the  fore  and  rear  ends  of  the  raft  and 
slowly  and  grudgingly  gave  us  the  channel.  The 
captain  shook  his  fist  at  them  as  we  steamed  labori- 
ously by,  and  removed  his  eternal  cigarette-holder  from 
his  mouth,  as  if  to  annihilate  them  with  a  volley  of 
invectives.  Mindful  of  the  lady  passengers  at  his  elbow, 
however,  he  thought  better  of  it,  and  blowing  the  rem- 
nant of  the  last  cigarette  away  with  an  impatient  puff, 
he  lit  a  new  one  and  sent  his  orders  down  the  speak- 
ing-tube to  put  on  full  speed. 

Our  steamer  was  thoroughly  Russian  in  its  disposition 
to  make  a  tremendous  fuss  about  nothing.  In  re- 
sponse to  the  captain's  orders  for  full  speed  its  engines 
throbbed  and  pulsated  at  a  feverish  rate,  and  its 
paddles  set  up  such  a  prodigious  splashing  that  one 
might  easily  be  deceived  into  thinking  it  was  making 
fifteen  knots  an  hour,  if  our  surroundings  would  only 
assist  in  the  delusion. 

Neither  the  Cossack  urchin  on  the  right  bank  (who 
was  amusing  himself  by  keeping  up  with  us)  however, 
nor  the  herd  of  horses  swimming  and  wading  across 
the  river  ahead  of  us  were  to  be  humbugged  by  our 
fussy  outlay  of  noise  and  steam.    The  youngster  easily 


UP  THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 


255 


kept  abreast  of  us  at  a  dogtrot,  and  the  horses  refused 
to  accept  us  as  a  thing  to  avoid  till  we  took  to  toot- 
ing and  whistling  at  them,  as  we  did  at  the  raft. 

The  country  was  monotonous,  and  life  on  the  banks 
of  the  river  might  easily  have  been  more  picturesque 
and  stirring.  Our  steamer  was  winding  and  twisting 
about  through  the  heart  of  the  country  of  the  Don 
Cossacks.  We  saw  these  Cossacks  on  the  banks  in 
charge  of  big  herds  of  horses  and  cattle,  and  we  had 
them,  passengers  and  deck  hands,  on  the  boat.  On 
shore  the  passengers  saw  them  galloping  about,  throw- 
ing the  lasso  with  the  cxpertness  of  Texas  cowboys, 
and  as  fishermen,  in  little  half-moon  boats,  they  were 
an  ever-present  feature  of  the  river.  But  the  passen- 
gers looked  in  vain  for  the  realization  of  the  figure  the 
Cossack  cuts  in  romance. 

Where  were  the  picturesque  horsemen  of  the  stirring 
tales  of  Count  Tolstoi,  and  Gogol,  of  "  The  Cossacks," 
and  "  Taras  Bulba,"  the  descendants  of  Mazeppa  ;  the 
wild  borderers  and  free-lances  of  the  steppe?  The 
men  on  horseback  looked  like  ordinary  mortals.  They 
were  neither  richly  armed  nor  gorgeously  caparisoned. 
In  fact,  they  were  armed  only  with  whip  and  lasso, 
and  caparisoned  with  very  sorry-looking  saddles  and 
bridles.  Their  only  striking  feature  was  a  red-banded 
cap  and  red-striped  trousers,  which  gave  them  a  semi- 
military  appearance.  Both  horsemen  and  fishermen 
wore  these  red  evidences  of  their  allegiance  to  the 
Czar.  All  Cossacks  are  soldiers.  Every  able-bodied 
man  is  under  obligation  to  serve  in  the  army.  They 
hold  their  lands  and  are  exempt  from  every  form  of 
Imperial  taxation,  on  the  condition  of  always  being 


256  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


ready-equipped  with  horse  and  accoutrements  to  take 
the  field.  They  provide  their  own  horses  and  saddles 
and  the  Government  supplies  them  with  rifles. 

These  ordinary-looking  mortals,  who  squat  in  their 
cockle-shell  craft  and  spend  their  days  and  nights  in 
mending  fishing-nets  and  baiting  hooks,  are  the  descend- 
ants of  the  bold  buccaneers  who  used  to  descend  the 
Don  in  big  fleets  of  these  same  boats  and  pounce  on 
Turkish  galleys  in  the  Sea  of  Azov,  and  who,  after  the 
Crimean  War,  boasted  that  they  would  in  the  same 
way  have  captured  the  British  fleets  before  Sevastopol, 
had  the  Czar  given  them  permission. 

At  times  the  sinuosities  of  the  way  were  aggravated 
by  a  bewildering  number  of  white  and  red  pyramidal 
buoys,  and  the  necessity  of  obeying  their  directions  to 
prevent  running  aground.  So  tortuous  was  our  course, 
half  the  time,  that  the  passengers  of  the  upper  deck, 
under  a  scant  awning,  were  kept  in  good  exercise  mov- 
ing from  one  side  to  the  other  to  keep  in  the  shade. 

In  spite  of  buoys,  and  all  other  precautions,  however, 
we  found  ourselves  aground  about  once  every  two 
hours,  day  and  night. 

Among  the  third-class  passengers  were  several  sturdy 
raftsmen,  who  received  a  free  passage  back  to  Kalatch 
on  condition  that  they  lend  a  hand  when  the  steamer 
runs  aground.  They  assisted  her  over  shallow  places 
by  means  of  a  crude  anchor  and  a  cable.  The  "  anchor  " 
consisted  of  a  beam  about  thirty  feet  long,  peaked  at 
one  end,  and  with  an  iron  cross-bar  near  the  sharpened 
end.  Wading  ahead  a  hundred  yards  or  so  with  this 
beam  and  the  noosed  end  of  the  cable,  they  placed 
the  noose  over  the  cross-bar  and  dipped  the  sharp  end 


UP  THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 


257 


of  the  beam  in  the  sand.  All  hands  then  bore  down 
on  the  long  end  of  the  beam,  while  the  steamer  was 
hauled  forward  by  working  the  capstan. 

This  process  was  slow  and  not  always  sure.  Some- 
times, when  the  free  passengers  were  complacently 
perched  along  the  beam  holding  it  down,  something 
slipped  and  all  were  precipitated  into  the  water. 
Passengers  are  expected  to  take  an  interest  in  over- 
coming the  difficulties  at  these  shallow  places.  The 
sounding-pole  betrays  the  fact  that  the  water  is  three 
inches  deeper  on  one  side  of  the  boat  than  the  other. 
All  passengers  are  then  required  to  crowd  over  to  the 
deep  water  side  to  help  ease  her  off. 

Sometimes  a  station  consisted  of  a  housed  hulk,  and 
sometimes  the  steamer  merely  thrust  her  nose  up 
against  the  bank  to  let  passengers  on  or  off.  In  the 
latter  case  a  plank  was  run  ashore  and  a  hand-rail  im- 
provised by  means  of  a  sounding-pole  and  the  shoul- 
ders of  a  couple  of  roustabouts,  one  on  deck,  the  other 
ashore. 

The  passengers  were  the  most  interesting,  and  often 
the  most  amusing,  not  to  say  instructive,  objects  seen 
on  the  trip.  There  was  a  light-haired,  light-eyed  lady 
with  a  shrill  voice,  who  flirted  all  the  way  with  the 
captain  and  wanted  to  give  orders  for  him  down  the 
speaking-tube.  Some  of  these  orders  are  given  in 
English  on  Russian  boats,  the  choicest  one  of  them  all 
being  "  shtop-a-leetle."  To  hear  this  lady  shout  shrilly 
in  the  speaking-tube  "  shtop-a-leetle,"  was  one  of  the 
diversions  of  the  journey,  and  will  always  be  associated 
with  my  reminiscences  of  the  Don. 

There  was  a  gray-whiskered  army  officer  who  tried 


25 8  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


to  cut  out  the  captain  in  the  esteem  of  the  light-haired 
lady,  but  failed.  This  officer  looked  a  general,  at  least, 
and  when  talking  you  felt  certain  that  he  was  discus- 
sing the  movements  of  monster  armies  and  the  manner 
of  conducting  big  campaigns.  Since  the  pale-haired 
lady  refused  to  give  up  the  captain  and  the  speaking- 
tube  on  his  account,  however,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  he 
was  nothing  but  a  senior  lieutenant  and  gave  utterance 
to  nothing  in  particular. 

There  was  an  Armenian  lady,  with  three  children  and 
three  nurses,  who  took  as  much  trouble  looking  after 
the  lot  as  if  they  were  all  children  and  all  in  her  charge. 

There  were  merchants  who  talked  rubles  and  ko- 
pecks all  day  long,  and  a  couple  of  seedy-looking 
popes  or  priests — gentlemen  of  the  cloth. 

The  martial  element  of  the  company  was  increased 
at  one  of  the  stations  by  a  very  much  booted,  spurred, 
sworded  and  whiskered  Cossack  officer,  who  spoke  to 
nobody  and  smoked  cigarettes  without  a  break  for  an 
hour  at  a  stretch.  He  looked  the  very  incarnation  of 
war.  Higher  up  the  river,  on  a  bank  that  did  service  as  a 
landing-place,  was  seen,  as  the  steamer  turned  her  nose 
to  the  shore,  another  officer  who  seemed  to  be  a  coun- 
terpart of  our  fellow-passenger.  He,  too,  looked  an 
understudy  of  Mars.  Surely  the  captain  was  never 
going  to  commit  the  folly  of  bringing  together  these 
two  martial  atoms  ?  Nothing  less  than  a  duel  could  be 
expected  from  a  contact  between  these  two.  Come  to- 
gether, however,  they  did,  on  the  bank,  in  sight  of  all. 
And  the  catastrophe  that  we  witnessed  was  such  as 
happens  when  a  couple  of  school-girls  meet  after  vaca- 
tion.   Like  a  pair  of  amiable  misses  these  whiskered 


VP   THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 


2S9 


Cossacks  threw  their  arms  about  each  other's  necks 
and  kissed. 

Kalatch  is  three  days'  journey  by  steamboat  up  the 
Don  from  Rostoff.  The  time  occupied  in  reaching  it, 
however,  conveys  to  the  American  altogether  a  mis- 
leading idea  regarding  the  distance  between  the  two 
places,  until  he  understands  the  sinuous  and  shallow 
nature  of  the  river  and  the  extraordinary  methods  that 
have  to  be  resorted  to  at  times  to  help  the  steamer 
along. 

The  prominent  features  of  Kalatch  were  lumber, 
vodka  shops,  red-shirted  lumbermen,  and  a  boat  hotel 
for  the  accommodation  of  travelers.  On  the  upper 
deck  of  this  floating  caravansary,  at  a  near  table,  were 
a  party  of  Russian  travelers.  Noticing  that  I  was  a 
foreigner,  they  ceased  talking  their  mother  tongue  and 
began  chattering  in  French.  In  a  few  minutes  they 
dropped  French  and  took  a  turn  at  German. 

This  peculiarity  of  the  traveling  Russian  had  come 
under  the  observation  of  the  writer  many  times,  and  I 
have  yet  to  come  to  a  satisfactory  solution  of  their 
motive.  The  airing  of  their  linguistic  accomplishments 
was,  on  the  whole,  too  modest  in  its  manifestations  to 
justify  a  verdict  of  ostentation.  Their  talk  was  to  one 
another  and  not  at  the  foreigner,  whose  presence,  never- 
theless, undoubtedly  had  stimulated  their  tongues  to 
the  international  exercise. 

The  explanation  that  occurs  to  me  as  being  the 
most  probable  is  this,  nearly  all  Russians  of  education 
and  noble  birth  learn  several  languages  in  their  youth. 
English  governesses,  French  teachers,  German  nurses, 
instructed  them  in  their  tender  youth,  and  made  these 


260  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


languages  as  easy  to  them  as  their  own.  The  number 
of  Russians  one  meets  who  once  knew  these  languages, 
and  for  want  of  opportunities  to  speak  them  have  for- 
gotten one  or  all  of  them,  is  surprising.  When,  there- 
fore, a  party  of  educated  Russians  suddenly  discover 
the  proximity  of  a  foreigner,  the  circumstance  reminds 
them  of  their  lingual  abilities,  which  they  immediately 
proceed  to  exercise. 

Shortly  after  the  Crimean  war  had  brought  home  to 
the  Russian  government  the  necessity  of  improving 
communications,  a  short  line  of  railroad  was  built  be- 
tween Tzaritzin  and  Kalatch,  connecting  the  Volga 
and  the  Don.  The  railroad  was  built  as  a  temporary 
expedient  and  forerunner  of  a  canal,  by  means  of  which 
steamers  could  pass  from  one  river  to  the  other,  and  it 
early  gained  the  reputation  of  being  the  worst  piece  of 
railway  traveling  in  the  world.  Two  trains  a  week 
used  to  start  in  a  venturesome  way  over  it,  and  the 
chances  of  running  off  the  rails,  or  breaking  down, 
raised  the  odds  against  the  travelers  to  such  a  level  as 
induced  many  of  them  to  prefer  the  old  way  of  horses 
and  tarantasses. 

August,  1890,  the  canal  had  not  been  dug,  but  the 
railway  had  improved  with  age,  for  the  author  found 
nothing  disreputable  about  it  save  the  indifference  of 
its  management  to  the  flight  of  time.  It  now  has  a 
daily  train,  and  by  means  of  petroleum-refuse  fuel,  and 
plenty  of  axle-grease  the  fifty  miles  are  overcome  in 
the  brief  space  of  four  hours.  We  should  have  done 
it  in  three  hours  and  fifty  minutes  had  not  the  con- 
ductor lingered  at  one  of  the  stations,  for  about  ten 
minutes,  haggling  over  the  price  of  a  young  sturgeon, 


THEOSOPTTTCAL  UNIVT&SITY  L1BKAH* 
Point  Loma,  California 


UP  THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 


261 


which  a  Cossack  fisherman  had  brought  to  try  to  sell. 
The  conductor  succeeded  in  cheapening  the  fish  twenty- 
kopecks  (twelve  cents),  and  from  the  tremendous  in- 
terest taken  in  the  transaction  by  the  passengers  it  is 
fair  to  presume  not  one  of  them  had  any  objection  to 
the  brief  delay  of  the  train.  To  many  of  them,  no  doubt, 
a  railway  ride  was  one  of  those  rare  pleasures  that  are 
all  the  better  appreciated  for  being  long  drawn  out. 

The  chief  feature  at  every  station  were  women  and 
girls  with  heaps  of  watermelons,  and  the  heart's  de- 
sire of  about  every  passenger  on  the  train  seemed  to 
be  to  obtain  a  melon  at  each  stopping-place  for  half 
the  price  the  venders  appeared  willing  to  take.  The 
number  of  melons  was  so  ridiculously  out  of  propor- 
tion to  the  possible  number  of  purchasers  that  it 
seemed  a  veritable  case  of  commercial  suicide  on  the 
part  of  the  women  to  refuse  anything  that  might  be 
offered.  This  glaring  evidence  of  an  over-stocked 
market  was  not  by  any  means  lost  on  the  passengers, 
who  would  not  have  been  Russians  if  it  had  been,  and 
just  before  the  departure  of  the  train  every  bargainer 
would  secure  a  melon  at  reduced  rates  and  hasten 
aboard.  Between  one  station  and  another  the  journey 
was  a  picnic  of  melon-eaters,  who  added  one  day's 
contribution  to  an  already  well-defined  streak  of  melon 
rinds  on  either  side  of  the  track. 

Trees  and  gardens  at  the  pleasant  little  station 
houses  relieved  the  monotony  of  the  otherwise  tree- 
less steppe,  and  a  leather  medal  should  be  awarded  to 
one  of  the  station-masters  who,  about  midway  of  the 
line,  had  produced  a  flower  garden  that  would  be  a 
credit  to  any  country. 


262 


THR  0  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUST  A  NG. 


We  started  at  eight  o'clock,  and  in  the  broad  glare 
of  the  August  noon  there  came  into  view  from  the 
windows  of  the  train  a  dusty-looking  town  and  a  river 
broad  as  the  Mississippi,  a  section  of  which  was 
half  hidden  by  a  multitude  of  rafts  and  shipping. 
The  dusty  town  was  Tzaritzin,  and  the  broad  river  the 
Volga. 

After  a  few  weeks  of  experience  in  knocking  about 
Russia,  and  of  the  inevitable  disillusion  of  its  provin- 
cial towns,  one  comes  to  dread,  rather  than  rejoice  at 
the  prospect  of  making  the  acquaintance  of  a  new  city. 

The  first  glimpse  of  Tzaritzin  was  peculiarly  ominous 
and  depressing,  and  a  closer  acquaintance  with  it  am- 
ply confirmed  one's  worse  presentiments.  People, 
horses,  droskies,  drivers,  houses — everything  in  it  was 
yellow  with  dust.  Dust  was  ankle  deep,  even  on  the 
best  parts  of  the  streets ;  everywhere  else  the  spaces 
that  answer  the  purpose  of  streets  offered  the 
most  villainous  succession  of  holes  and  humps  that 
ever  disgraced  a  town.  On  the  way  from  the  station 
to  the  hotel  one  had  to  cling  to  the  ramshackle  drosky 
with  both  hands  to  escape  being  pitched  out,  and 
the  performance  of  the  dusty  jehu  in  keeping  his  narrow 
seat  was  a  masterpiece  of  equipoise.  The  character  of 
horses  and  droskies  was  in  keeping  with  the  streets, 
as  in  other  places,  which  in  Tzaritzin  means  that  the 
former  were  the  scum  of  the  herds  on  the  adjacent 
steppes,  and  that  the  latter  were  calculated  to  inspire 
in  the  mind  of  the  passenger  visions  of  broken  bones. 

Happily,  my  acquaintance  with  this  dust-hole  of  a 
city,  as  well  as  its  hotel,  was  destined  to  be  brief.  The 
caravansary  in  question  was  a  combination  of  hotel 


UP  THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 


263 


and  variety  theater.  In  it  the  guests  could  take  their 
choice  between  eating  their  meals  in  bed-rooms,  as 
cheerless  as  prison  cells,  or  dining  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  squeaking  fiddles  and  shrill-voiced  young 
women,  who  held  forth  as  song-and-dance  artists  on  a 
stage  at  one  end  of  the  dining-room. 

Wondering  the  while  which  of  these  two  evils  is 
likely  to  be  the  worst,  you  turn  your  attention  to  the 
toilet  arrangements  in  your  room.  There  is  neither 
soap,  towel,  nor  water.  Your  spirits  revive,  however, 
at  discovering  something  resembling  a  washstand  in 
one  corner,  and  in  answer  to  a  few  rings  of  the  bell  a 
melancholy  woman  brings  a  pitcher  of  water  which 
she  pours  into  a  tin  receptacle  above  the  stand.  This 
receptacle  you  have  made  the  acquaintance  of  in 
other  Russian  hotels,  and  have  learned  that  if  you 
press  a  treadle  with  your  foot  it  squirts  a  jet  of  water 
that  is  understood  by  the  natives,  but  which  will  very 
likely  strike  an  unsophisticated  foreigner  in  the  face. 

Here,  however,  you  discover  that  there  is  no  treadle 
and  no  visible  way  of  getting  at  the  water.  A  careful 
search  at  length  discloses  a  loose  brass  spigot,  with  the 
thick  end  inside,  in  the  bottom  of  the  vessel.  If  this 
spigot  could  be  removed  altogether,  a  stream  of  water 
would  trickle  out  with  which  you  could  dally  in  com- 
fort. But  a  knob  at  the  small  end  forbids  this  liberty, 
and  requires  you  to  hold  the  wretched  stopper  in  with 
one  hand  in  order  that  sufficient  water  to  wet  the 
other  may  escape.  A  more  ingenuous  arrangement 
to  thwart  the  efforts  of  a  person  to  wash  the  hands 
and  face  could  scarcely  have  been  invented. 

There  was  to  be  a  boat  for  Nijni  Novgorod  at  nine 


264  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 

o'clock  next  morning.  Kamaret  in  hand,  I  sallied 
forth  in  the  glare  and  dust  to  see  if  there  was  any- 
thing worth  photographing.  Some  Turcoman  team- 
sters, with  a  string  of  camel  carts,  filed  past,  an  Asiatic 
spectacle  that  I  had  not  before  seen  in  European  Rus- 
sia. Tzaritzin,  however,  is  in  easy  touch  with  Asia  by 
an  all-water  route  down  the  Volga  to  Astrakhan  and 
across  the  Caspian. 

A  rude  bench  on  the  edge  of  the  bluff  on  which  the 
town  is  built  attracted  me  by  reason  of  the  good  view 
to  be  obtained  from  it  of  the  Volga,  and  the  multitude 
of  busy  workers  among  the  rafts  and  shipping. 

About  five  o'clock  there  appeared  on  the  southern 
horizon  of  the  river  a  white  speck  that  grew  larger 
apace,  and  finally  assumed  the  shape  and  dimensions  of 
a  magnificent  steamboat,  patterned  after  the  floating 
palaces  of  the  Mississippi.  As  it  steamed  majestically 
up  to  the  landing,  there  could  be  no  manner  of  doubt 
that  the  steamer  owed  its  existence  to  American  enter- 
prise, which  must  have  either  placed  it  on  the  Volga  or 
furnished  the  pattern  for  those  who  did. 

My  chief  interest  in  it,  however,  was  as  to  the  time 
of  its  departure  up  stream,  and  I  at  once  repaired  to 
the  office  on  the  floating  dock,  to  which  it  was  shortly 
moored.  By  dint  of  insistence  with  the  ticket  agent, 
who  persisted  in  replying  "  sei  tchas,"  which  means 
any  length  of  time,  from  a  minute  to  a  year,  I  at 
length  discovered  that  it  would  start  in  half  an  hour, 
and  would  take  me  to  Nijni  Novgorod.  At  the  hotel 
I  was  advised  by  the  proprietor  to  remain  and  witness 
the  performances  at  the  theatrical  end  of  the  dining- 
room  in  the  evening,  the  character  of  the  entertain- 


UP  THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 


265 


merit  being  indicated  by  the  sawing  of  an  imaginary 
violin. 

Not  to  be  tempted,  however,  by  the  blandishments 
of  resin  and  catgut,  as  manipulated  by  the  talent  of 
the  Lower  Volga,  I  hastened  aboard  the  steamer.  I 
got  aboard  in  time  to  shut  the  window  of  my  cabin 
against  a  hurricane  of  dust  that  sprang  up  and  ob- 
scured everything  at  the  distance  of  a  hundred  yards. 
As  we  paddled  away  nothing  was  to  be  seen  of  Tzar- 
itzin  but  the  dust  of  its  streets,  which  had  been  con- 
verted into  a  dense  cloud,  and  which  completely  hid 
the  city  from  our  view. 

The  cabins  were  spacious  and  left  nothing  to  be 
desired,  save  sheets  and  a  pillow.  Since  every  traveler 
in  Russia  is  supposed  to  cany  these  articles  with  him, 
the  steamboat  people  consider  they  have  made  ample 
provision  for  the  comfort  of  their  first-class  passengers 
by  providing  broad,  soft  lounges  for  them  to  lie  down 
on  at  night.  The  steamboats  carry  no  bed  linen, 
though  the  trips  occupy  several  days.  In  every  other 
respect  the  cabins  are  superior  even  to  those  on  the 
Fall  River  Line  and  other  crack  American  steamers. 

The  cuisine  is  very  good.  You  can  dine  a  la  carte 
on  sturgeon  and  champagne,  or  you  can  get  a  four- 
course  table  d'hote  dinner  with  a  half  bottle  of  drink- 
able Crimean  claret  for  a  couple  of  rubles.  Or,  if  you 
are  economical,  and  care  to  do  in  Russia  as  plenty  of 
the  Russians  do,  you  can  forage  for  yourself  whenever 
the  steamer  calls  at  a  town,  and  obtain  from  the 
steamer  nothing  but  hot  water  to  make  your  tea. 

The  arrangements  are  better  than  on  the  Don 
steamers,  where  at  dinner-time  every  window  of  the 


266 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


saloon  is  apt  to  frame  the  unkempt  head  of  one  of  the 
third-class  passengers,  who  regards  with  wolfish  in- 
terest the  contents  of  your  plate  and  speculates 
vaguely  as  to  the  probable  sensation  on  the  palate  of 
the  various  dishes  as  they  come  in. 

Every  Russian  passenger  carries  tea  and  sugar, 
usually  in  a  little  calico  bag.  Bread  and  lemons  are 
bought  at  the  stopping  places,  and  every  steamer 
keeps  a  lubberly,  unwilling  sort  of  youth,  whose  duty 
is  to  provide  plenty  of  hot  water.  Teapot  and  glasses 
are  obtained  from  the  steward,  and  the  Russian  family 
by  means  of  these  ingredients  manage  to  pass  no 
small  share  of  their  time  drinking  tea  and  sweetened 
water.  The  Russian  would  probably  rebel  against  the 
insinuation  of  sweetened  wrater,  but  the  straw-colored 
fluid  that  is  yielded  by  the  overtaxed  leaves  after  the 
teapot  has  been  replenished  over  and  over  again  with 
hot  water  is  not  to  be  converted  into  tea  by  a  mere 
politeness  of  the  tongue. 

Life  on  the  boat  was  dull.  The  men  played  cards 
and  the  women  read  novels.  There  was  a  spacious 
promenade  deck,  but  no  promenaders  to  speak  of, 
though  the  nights  were  moonlight  and  the  weather  all 
that  could  be  desired.  By  walking  round  the  deck  a 
few  times  one  made  himself  conspicuous.  If,  per- 
chance, one  of  the  Russian  travelers  took  to  strutting 
up  and  down,  it  was  some  vain  young  peacock  of  an 
officer  who  had  nothing  to  recommend  him  but  a  new 
uniform,  or  some  giddy  member  of  the  opposite  sex 
posing  for  the  admiration  of  the  men.  Russians 
rarely  walk  for  exercise,  they  being  in  this  respect 
thoroughly  Oriental. 


UP  THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 


267 


In  the  third-class  section  of  the  boat  life  was  some- 
what more  interesting.  Here  the  moujik  in  his  red 
shirt  and  unkempt  hair  was  in  his  element  with  an 
accordion  and  plenty  of  weak  tea  and  melons.  As  on 
the  railway,  melons  formed  a  prominent  feature  of  all 
the  landings,  as  well  as  of  the  traffic  on  the  river. 
They  went  past  by  boat-loads,  and  at  the  stations  they 
were  built  up  in  pyramids  by  the  thousand,  like  can- 
non-balls in  a  fortress.  In  season  the  common  people 
almost  seem  to  live  on  bread  and  melons. 

The  river  life  consisted  of  tugs  towing  monster  rafts 
and  strings  of  huge  barges.  The  bigness  of  the  rafts 
and  the  number  of  barges  hooked  on  to  one  tiny  tug 
seemed  to  curiously  illustrate  the  Russian  disposition 
to  overreach  and  get  the  best  of  a  bargain.  You  meet 
undersized  tugs  struggling  along  with  no  less  than  six 
barges,  each  one  of  which  is  several  times  larger  than 
itself,  and  though  you  may  be  mistaken,  you  cannot 
help  thinking  that  the  owner  of  the  barges  has  some- 
how defrauded  the  owner  of  the  tug. 

All  steamers  burn  refuse  petroleum,  which  is  brought 
from  the  Baku  refineries  on  the  Caspian  and  moored 
in  tank  hulks  at  various  points  along  the  river.  It  is 
stored  in  tanks  over  the  fire-boxes,  into  which  it  is  fed 
by  means  of  taps.  As  it  leaves  the  taps,  jets  of  steam 
convert  it  into  fine  spray  and  scatter  it  over  the  fire- 
box, where  it  is  consumed  by  instantaneous  combus- 
tion. The  interior  of  the  fire-box  presents  to  the  eye 
nothing  but  a  mass  of  yellow  flame. 

The  scenery  of  the  Volga  is  tame,  but  not  devoid 
of  beauty  ;  and  in  places,  to  one  coming  from  a  jour- 
ney over  the  monotonous  steppes,  seems  really  beau- 


268  THRO  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  M  US  TA  NG. 


tiful.  It  is  not  to  be  classed  with  the  Rhine  or  the 
Hudson;  rather  does  it  belong  to  the  class  of  the 
Danube,  the  Mississippi,  the  Yangtsi-Kiang,  and  other 
principal  rivers  of  the  world.  Though  shallower  than 
any  of  these,  it  compares  favorably  with  them  in  size 
and  length. 

In  the  internal  economy  of  Russia  it  plays  as  im- 
portant a  part  as  the  Mississippi  did  in  that  of  the 
United  States  before  the  development  of  the  railroads. 
The  railroad  system  of  Russia  is  (1890)  as  yet  in  its 
infancy,  and  the  great  artery  of  commerce  between  the 
lumber  regions  of  the  North  and  the  grain-producing 
steppes  of  the  Southeast  is  the  Volga.  Years  ago  the 
huge  barges  used  to  be  laboriously  towed  by  teams  of 
men,  as  are  the  big  freight  sampans  on  the  Chinese 
rivers  ;  and  the  burlaki,  as  they  were  called,  and  their 
exhausting  labors,  have  been  the  theme  for  the  inspi- 
ration of  Riepin's  brush.  Later  they  used  to  haul 
them  upstream  by  means  of  anchors  and  capstans. 
These  primitive  methods  were  relegated  to  the  past 
by  the  defeats  of  the  Crimean  War,  which  did  Russia 
much  more  good  than  harm,  by  teaching  her  that  na- 
tional greatness  could  only  be  achieved  by  progress  in 
the  arts  and  sciences.  Now  there  are  several  lines  of 
good  steamboats,  which  leave  little  to  be  desired,  un- 
less it  be  an  increase  in  speed.  The  distance  from 
Tzaritzin  to  Nijni  Novgorod  is  but  1685  versts,  yet  the 
journey  occupied  six  and  a  half  days. 

At  Samara,  Simbirskh,  and  Kazan  the  passenger  list 
assumed  a  more  polyglot  aspect  from  the  addition  of 
Tartars,  many  thousands  of  whom  reside  in  the  pro- 
vinces of  the  Middle  Volga.    They  retain  their  Mohan> 


UP   THE  DON  AND  VOLGA. 


269 


medan  religion,  and  the  small  minarets  of  their 
mosques  in  Kazan  are  visible  from  the  deck  of  the 
steamer.  In  the  evening  they  retired  to  the  stern  of 
the  boat,  and  kneeling  toward  Mecca,  performed  their 
devotions.  The  zigzag  course  of  the  river  befooled 
them  sorely  as  to  the  direction  of  the  holy  city.  Some- 
times they  commenced  their  prayers  by  kneeling  and 
bobbing  their  heads  in  the  direction  of  Mecca  and 
ended  by  addressing  themselves,  unwittingly,  to  a  well- 
nigh  opposite  direction,  from  the  steamer  having 
passed,  during  their  pious  meditations,  a  bend  in  the 
river. 

These  scenes  were  varied  at  times  by  a  diversion  of 
some  kind  ashore.  One  night  all  the  people  of  a  vil- 
lage congregated  on  the  bank  near  a  station.  The 
moonlight,  the  broad  river  and  the  majestic  steamer 
inspired  the  female  part  of  the  crowd  to  song.  For 
some  distance  after  we  had  left  the  vicinity  we  could 
hear  this  vocal  tribute  to  a  moonlight  night  on  the 
Volga,  sung  by  the  wives  and  daughters  of  an  entire 
village. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


AT    NIJNI  NOVGOROD. 

IN  a  previous  chapter  I  said,  among  other  things, 
that  the  journey  up  the  Volga  occupied  six  and  a 
half  days,  which  I  condemned  as  an  indication  of  Rus- 
sian indifference  to  the  flight  of  time. 

On  the  Volga  steamers  the  ticket  is  for  passage 
only  ;  food  is  obtained  and  paid  for  as  at  the  Russian 
hotels,  where  rooms  are  under  one  management  and 
dining  arrangements  under  another.  Just  before  land- 
ing at  Nijni  Novgorod,  when  the  obsequious  young 
man  in  swallow-tail  coat  and  semi-immaculate  shirt- 
bosom,  who  had  been  so  devoted  and  disinterested  in 
his  attention  to  my  wants,  presented  my  bill  for  din- 
ners, etc.,  I  made  a  fairly  startling  discovery.  We  had 
been,  not  six  days  and  a  half  on  the  journey,  but 
eight  and  a  half !  In  humble  imitation  of  Rip  Van 
Winkle  I  had,  at  some  part  of  the  voyage,  laid  down 
and  slept  for  two  days  without  suspecting  it! 

It  is  surprising  how  rapidly  and  unconsciously  the 
traveler  becomes  cynical  and  suspicious  under  the 
benign  influence  of  the  paternal  rule  of  the  Russian 
Tchin.  Yet  how  could  one  suspect  the  young  gentle- 
man in  the  swallow-tail  coat  ?  For  did  he  not  instantly 
summon  a  brother  swallow-tail  to  decide  between  us, 
whether  we  had  been  six  days  or  eight  coming  from 
Tzaritzin  ?     And   how   could  the   author,  with  an 

270 


AT  NIJNI  NOVGOROD.  27  I 

extremely  limited  stock  of  Russian  words  at  com- 
mand, hope  to  withstand  the  torrent  of  convincing 
consonants  that  rolled  from  the  tongues,  and  acquired 
new  force  from  the  pantomime  of  these  two  practical 
knights  of  an  honorable  profession  ? 

The  contest  was  most  unequal ;  and  then,  when  it 
occurred  to  me  that  these  two  trusted  servants  of  a 
steamboat  company,  who  should  naturally  take  pride 
in  promoting  the  interests  of  their  employers,  would 
be  most  unlikely  to  attempt  to  reduce  the  record  of 
speed  one  fourth,  I  succumbed.  It  is  true  that  if  I 
had  slept  for  two  days  without  eating  anything,  there 
still  remained  the  inconsistency  of  charging  for  eight 
dinners  when  I  had  ordered  only  six.  I  was,  however, 
so  delighted  at  having  gone  through  so  remarkable  a 
performance,  that  I  not  only  paid  the  bill  without  fur- 
ther dispute,  but  gave  the  swallow-tails  a  ruble  douceur 
apiece  as  a  slight  recompense  for  having  at  first  sus- 
pected them  of  duplicity.  Unfortunately  I  was  never 
able  to  recall  any  extraordinary  visions  or  dreams  in 
connection  with  my  forty-eight  hours'  sleep  ;  nor  was 
I  able  to  discover,  by  comparing  it  with  an  almanac, 
any  two  days'  jump  in  my  diary. 

Fast  or  slow,  however,  I  felt  grateful  to  the  steamer 
for  having  landed  me  in  Nijni  Novgorod  at  the  full 
tide  of  the  great  annual  fair.  This  feature  of  Nijni 
Novgorod,  to  which  the  city  is  indebted  for  its  world- 
renown,  was  in  full  swing.  The  hum  and  bustle  of  the 
fair  were  suggestive  of  a  hive  of  very  busy  bees,  in 
which  the  workers,  however,  were  not  bees,  but  men 
and  women,  and  the  queen  bee  a  woman  with  scales, 
like  Justice,  only  not  blind,  and  weighing,  instead  of 


2 7  2  THRO  UGH  R  USSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


equity,  products  of  human  industry  from  every  quarter 
of  the  globe. 

There  is  an  impression  abroad  that,  owing  to  the 
development  of  the  Russian  railway  system,  the  great 
fair  of  Nijni  Novgorod  is  no  longer  what  it  was.  This 
is  true  in  one  sense,  but  not  in  the  sense  that  people 
commonly  accept  the  information.  To  the  astonish- 
ment of  the  Moscow  merchants  themselves,  who  fully 
expected  that  the  railways,  by  distributing  merchan- 
dise to  all  parts  of  the  country,  would  reduce  the 
Nijni  fair  to  an  historical  curiosity,  merchants  flock  to 
the  place  from  every  town  in  Russia  and  Siberia  in 
numbers  as  great  as  ever.  The  volume  of  business 
was,  in  1 890,  as  large  as  it  ever  was. 

In  Russia,  as  elsewhere,  conservatism  is  apt  to  pre- 
dict all  manner  of  evil  consequences  to  established 
institutions  by  radical  economic  changes.  The  con- 
servative merchants  of  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg  saw 
the  collapse  of  the  great  institution  of  the  Nijni  fair 
in  Russian  railway  extension.  But  these  conservative 
merchants,  in  no  way  abashed  by  the  discovery  of 
their  own  false  reasoning,  continue  to  come  to  Nijni 
as  of  yore  and  to  dispose  of  about  the  same  quantity 
of  goods. 

The  lesson  they  learned  from  the  experience  is  that 
improved  transportation  facilities,  by  cheapening  goods 
and  placing  them  within  easier  reach  of  the  people, 
have  simply  brought  about  an  increase  in  consumption 
and  demand.  The  merchant's  pro  rata  profits  have 
been  reduced  in  favor  of  the  consumers  by  the  new 
order  of  things,  but  since  he  sells  twice  as  many  goods 
as  formerly,  the  results  to  him  are  in  the  end  the  same 


A  T  NFJNI  NO  VGOROD. 


273 


or  better  than  before.  He  now  not  only  sells  as  many 
goods  as  ever  at  the  Nijni  Novgorod  fair,  but,  by  rea- 
son of  the  railways,  ships  an  equal  quantity  off  to  a 
ever  widening  circle  of  new  customers  elsewhere. 

The  old  order  of  things,  the  smaller  trade  and  the 
exorbitant  profits,  were  of  course  more  congenial  to 
the  conservative  Moscow  merchant,  who,  like  any 
other  fossil,  dislikes  to  be  stirred  up  by  the  uncere- 
monious pole  of  modern  progress.  But  the  consumers 
have  benefited  immensely,  while  the  only  result  to 
him  has  been  the  necessity  of  waking  up  to  a  juster 
and  livelier  sense  of  commercial  competition. 

In  the  shop  of  a  Moscow  merchant  I  met  traders 
from  widely  remote  parts  of  the  Russian  Empire. 
One  from  far  Irkutsk,  in  Eastern  Siberia,  informed  me 
that  it  cost  him  three  and  a  half  rubles  freight  on 
every  pood  of  goods  from  Nijni  to  Irkutsk.  At  the 
then  rate  of  exchange,  this  is  equivalent  to  $120  a  ton, 
American  weight.  I  asked  him  why  he  didn't  obtain 
his  goods  by  way  of  the  Pacific  and  the  Amoor  River. 
He  replied  that  the  paternal  Russian  government  had 
placed  the  lock  of  prohibitive  customs  duties  on  th.it 
door,  and  so  compelled  him  and  his  brother  merchants 
of  those  remote  regions  to  come  to  European  Russia 
to  buy  goods,  and  to  pay  the  enormous  addition  to 
their  cost  in  getting  them  home. 

My  merchant  friend,  who  had  attended  the  Nijni 
Novgorod  Fair  for  twenty  years  past,  gave  me  some 
particulars  of  the  trade. 

The  fair  opens  officially  on  July  15,  and  ends  on 
August  25.  Merchants  begin  to  arrive  and  do  business, 
however,  before  July  15,  and  the  fair  drags  along  into 


274 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


September.  Altogether  it  may  be  said  to  last  two 
months.  At  the  opening  ceremonies,  flags  are  hoisted 
all  over  the  city,  and  processions  of  priests  with 
crosses  and  ikons  pass  through  the  streets.  Squads  of 
police  arrive  from  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg,  and 
from  July  I  to  September,  the  Governor  of  the 
province  is  invested  with  full  powers,  even  of  life  and 
death,  as  in  military  government. 

For  ten  months  in  the  year,  the  long  rows  of  sub- 
stantial stone  and  brick  shops,  the  cobbled  streets,  the 
numerous  hotels  and  palatial  restaurants  of  the  modern 
fair-city  of  Nijni  Novgorod  are  deserted,  save  by  a 
few  watchmen.  During  the  seasons  of  high  water, 
at  the  melting  of  the  winter  snows  in  the  northern 
forests,  the  lower  stories  of  the  houses  are  often  under 
water,  and  in  order  to  get  about  the  streets  a  visitor 
would  require  a  boat. 

At  the  thawing  of  the  Siberian  rivers,  in  April  and 
May,  the  movement  of  goods  and  merchants  toward 
this  rendezvous  begins.  Down  the  rivers,  in  barges 
and  in  steamers,  wool,  hides,  tallow,  pelts,  and  other 
bulky  produce  from  Siberia  gravitate  toward  this 
common  center,  and,  during  the  fair,  occupy  the 
"  Siberisky  priestin  "  in  huge  stacks,  covered  with 
canvas,  or  long  sheds  roofed  with  tin.  As  fair  tin  e 
draws  near,  a  similar  movement  of  the  goods  for  which 
this  raw  material  is  to  be  exchanged  begins  from  the 
West.  Goods  are  packed  up  and  shipped  to  Nijni 
from  every  city  in  Europe,  and,  indirectly,  through 
Russian  and  German  houses,  from  America  also.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  mention  an  article  that  one  could 
not  buy  in  the  streets  offhand,  and  quite  impossible  to 


AT  NIJNI  NOVGOROD. 


275 


mention  anything  that  could  not  be  obtained  through 
agents. 

The  variety  of  goods  is  bewildering;  and  I  was  in- 
formed that  there  is  an  exchange  in  the  two  months  of 
about  300,000,000  rubles,  or  $175,000,000.  Most  busi- 
ness is  transacted  on  a  year's  credit.  Goods  are  sold 
to  be  paid  for  at  the  next  fair.  On  the  whole,  bad 
debts  are  rare,  and,  while  the  system  of  long  credit 
survives,  the  exorbitant  profits  that  in  the  past  history 
of  the  fair  have  justified  the  risk,  no  longer  obtain, 
owing  to  increased  competition. 

When  the  Russian,  Persian,  Rokhariot,  Siberian,  or 
other  merchant  who  trades  at  Nijni  pays  his  last  year's 
obligations,  he  expects  a  present.  If  a  wine  merchant, 
after  settling  his  bill,  he  looks  over  the  wholesaler's 
stock,  and  selecting  a  bottle  of  high-priced  champagne, 
jokingly  walks  off  with  it.  If  the  transaction  has  been 
in  saddlery,  he  appropriates  a  fancy  bridle.  While  I  was 
in  my  friend's  magazine,  a  repository  of  hardware,  a 
Samarkandian  merchant  who  called  to  settle  for  a 
couple  of  American  cotton  gins,  commenced  to  exam- 
ine critically  a  cross-cut  saw.  My  friend,  w  ho  had  just 
been  explaining  this  peculiarity  of  the  trade  of  the 
Nijni  fair,  gave  me  the  wink.  The  Samarkandian 
stepped  to  the  door,  and  summoning  a  youth,  quietly 
made  off  with  the  saw,  hardly  giving  the  owner  of  it  a 
smile  as  he  went  out. 

In  many  little  ways  customers  have  to  be  indulgently 
humored,  to  meet  the  peculiar  ways  and  ideas  of  the 
East.  The  Asiatic  customers  have  a  habit  of  dropping 
in  about  zakuski  time,  when,  of  course  they  are  politely 
invited  to  partake  of  the  tempting  spread  of  caviare, 


276  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


cheese,  sardines,  etc.,  that  is  set  out  in  the  little  rear 
room. 

Everything  counts.  Shrewd  Moscow  and  St.  Pe- 
tersburg merchants  make  a  point  of  sending  with  the 
goods  and  staff  of  clerks  to  Nijni,  one  or  two  of  their 
handsomest  young  women  clerks,  who  are  expected  to 
"  look  their  prettiest  "  and  attract  custom.  There  is 
said  to  be  no  sentiment  in  commerce.  Perhaps  not, 
in  a  world-wide  sense.  But  one  has  only  to  attend  the 
Nijni  fair  and  watch  one  of  these  lady  saleswomen  from 
Moscow]selling  a  bill  of  goods  to  a  rough,  half-civilized 
merchant  from  Central  Asia,  to  shatter  his  faith  in  the 
maxim.  How  can  this  rude  denizen  of  a  distant  mud- 
built  town,  inhabited  by  unwashed  men  and  bedraggled 
women,  bargain  on  fair  terms  with  this  dainty  young 
saleslady,  gotten  up  for  the  express  purpose  of  wheed- 
ling such  as  he  into  making  purchases? 

Rent  is  higher  in  Nijni  Novgorod  than  in  any  other 
city  in  the  world.  Persons  who  invest  capital  in  build- 
ings to  be  rented  must  get  a  reasonable  return  on  the 
outlay,  whether  it  be  in  Nijni  Novgorod  or  in  New 
York.  And  since  in  the  former  city  the  shops,  hotels, 
theaters,  restaurants,  etc.,  are  unoccupied  for  ten 
months  in  the  year,  twelve  months'  rent  has  to  be 
charged  for  the  other  two.  In  other  words,  the  mer- 
chant who  rents  premises  in  Nijni  for  the  two  months 
of  the  fair  has  to  pay  as  much  rent  as  if  he  remained 
for  a  year. 

The  utmost  precautions  are  taken  against  fire.  The 
electric  light  had  about  driven  from  the  streets  and 
shops  the  old  system  of  petroleum  lamps,  and  in 
another  season  or  two  will  probably  be  the  only  illumi- 


AT  NIJNI  NOVGOROD. 


277 


nation  permitted  by  the  authorities.  The  regulations 
in  regard  to  fire  are  amusingly  rough  on  the  cigarette 
smoker,  whose  habitat  is,  above  all  other  places,  Russia. 
A  person  caught  smoking  in  the  streets  is  arrested  and 
ingloriously  marched  off  to  the  police-station,  where  he 
is  fined  fifty  rubles.  At  the  hotels  a  couple  of  lynx- 
eyed  lackeys  in  the  employ  of  the  proprietor  arc- 
stationed  at  the  entrance  to  warn  the  outgoing  guests 
of  this  regulation,  and  to  bar  the  way  of  the  uninitiated, 
who  would  otherwise  step  jauntily  into  the  street  and 
into  the  arms  of  the  nearest  policeman.  These  dvorniks 
reap  a  rich  harvest  of  tips  from  the  guests  of  the  hotels, 
who  naturally  feel  under  obligations  to  them  from  saving 
them  fifty  ruble  fines. 

The  wisdom  of  these  precautions  against  fire  come 
to  be  understood  as  the  traveler  walks  about  the  city 
and  realizes  the  enormous  value  of  the  merchandise 
that  it  contains.  Every  hole  and  corner  is  literally 
crammed  with  goods.  The  shops  and  warehouses  are 
as  prolific  of  goods  as  the  streets,  caf£s,  and  hotels  are 
of  people,  and  both  goods  and  people  are  of  a  poly- 
glot character  not  to  be  seen  anywhere  else  in  the 
world. 

To  a  person  who  has  never  traveled  in  Asia,  a  trip 
to  Nijni  Novgorod  during  the  fair  would  more  than 
repay  the  trouble.  Merchants  from  distant  parts  of 
Asia  bring  their  manners  and  customs  with  them  to 
Nijni.  The  Persian  may  be  seen  in  turban  or  tall 
lamb-skin  hat  squatting  in  his  little  bazaar,  complacently 
stroking  his  beard  and  smoking  his  kalian,  precisely  as 
he  is  to  be  seen  in  Teheran  or  Ispahan.  Young  Tar- 
tars are  seen  by  the  score  strolling  about  the  streets 


278  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


peddling  bunches  of  Astrakhan  lamb-skins  so  beauti- 
fully dressed  as  to  tempt  almost  anybody  to  buy. 

There  is  a  hide  and  peltry  section,  where  Tartar  fur- 
riers may  be  seen  currying  Siberian  sables,  bear-skins, 
and  all  manner  of  costly  furs.  There  is  a  part  devoted 
to  the  sale  of  nuts,  the  trade  of  which  seems  to  be  in 
the  hands  of  the  Persians,  who  can  fill  your  order  from 
stock  in  hand,  whether  it  be  for  ten  kopecks'  worth 
of  walnuts  to  crack  and  eat,  or  for  twenty  tons  of  a 
dozen  varieties. 

There  is  a  quarter  occupied  by  temporary  booths 
and  stalls,  where  crowds  of  Russian  peasants,  the  men 
in  red  shirts  and  the  women  in  red  dresses  and  red 
'kerchiefs,  are  purchasing  or  cheapening  red  calico,  and 
all  manner  of  red  and  other  bright  colored  wearing 
apparel. 

And  close  by  is  the  show  quarter,  where  twenty  rival 
showmen  and  an  extremely  loud-mouthed  crowd  of 
assistants  are  hooting,  whistling,  beating  gongs,  drums, 
tins,  and  extracting  from  all  manner  of  wind  instru- 
ments a  very  Bedlam  of  noises.  Here  may  be  wit- 
nessed to  the  best  advantage,  perhaps,  the  childlike 
innocence  and  gullibility  of  the  moujik,  his  wife  and 
daughters.  These  simple  folk  are  to  be  seen  in  the 
densest  throngs,  gazing  in  mute  wonder  at  the  cheap 
paintings  on  the  booth  fronts  of  the  showmen  who 
succeed  in  kicking  up  the  greatest  and  most  unearthly 
racket.  This  is  very  likely  their  first  experience  of  city 
and  fair  life,  and  the  tremendous  difference  between 
the  outside  and  inside  of  these  places  is  as  yet  un- 
suspected. A  curious  feature  of  this  place  to  the  for- 
eigner is  that  soldiers  in  uniform  are  employed  by  the 


AT  NIJNI  NOVGOROD. 


279 


showmen  to  attract  the  crowd.  As  mentioned  in  a 
previous  chapter,  Russian  soldiers  are  permitted  to 
work  twenty-five  days  a  month. 

There  is  a  Chinese  quarter  without  any  Chinamen  in 
it,  and  nothing  to  justify  the  name  beyond  the  fact 
that  tea  is  sold  there,  and  that  a  rude  attempt  at 
pagoda  architecture  has  been  made,  with  a  few  figures 
of  exceedingly  doubtful  mandarins  on  the  roofs. 

A  few  minutes'  walk  from  these  reminders  of  Asian 
and  Russian  interior  life  brings  the  visitor  to  the  finest 
building,  apart  from  cathedrals — of  which  there  arc- 
two — in  Nijni.  On  the  way  you  have  traversed  a  neat 
boulevard,  shaded  by  an  avenue  of  trees  and  lined  with 
shops,  whose  windows  are  as  attractive  as  any  row  in 
Paris,  London,  or  New  York.  The  building  you  have 
reached  is  a  magnificent  arcade,  three  stories  high,  the 
upper  floors  being  occupied  as  government  offices  and 
banks,  and  the  lower  by  dealers  in  fancy  goods.  Here 
are  electric  lights,  tubs  filled  with  tropical  plants,  and 
a  military  band  in  the  evenings.  Can  it  be  possible, 
you  think,  that  all  this  is  only  an  affair  of  a  few  weeks, 
and  that  for  ten  months  out  of  every  twelve  solitude 
and  the  high  waters  of  the  Oka  and  the  Volga  arc  in 
possession  of  this  city?  Still  stranger  does  it  seem 
that  cathedrals  and  churches  should  be  abandoned  to 
the  owls  and  the  Evil  One,  and  the  Stock  Exchange  to 
the  twittering  of  the  birds. 

The  curious  incongruity  of  the  Bokhariot  and  the 
electric  light,  and  the  feverish  activity  all  about,  re- 
mind you,  however,  that  the  surroundings  are  alto- 
gether too  extraordinary  to  last  long.  You  are  also 
reminded  of  this  in  your  hotel.    The  dining-rooms  of 


28o 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


the  restaurants  are  converted  into  cafes  chantants. 
Young  women  from  all  the  towns  of  Russia,  in  cos- 
tumes as  abbreviated  as  the  law  allows,  sing,  or  attempt 
to  sing,  to  the  diners  at  the  restaurants  and  hotels, 
standing  on  raised  platforms  at  one  end  of  the  room. 

Everywhere  is  a  feverish  pressure  that,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  cannot  endure.  It  is  commerce  on  a  spree. 
The  debauch  lasts  a  couple  of  months,  and  when  it  is 
over,  this  extraordinary  collection  of  goods  and  people 
disappears. 

Some  of  the  merchants  ship  the  remnant  of  their 
stock  to  Irbit,  on  the  borders  of  Siberia,  in  the  province 
of  Perm,  where  there  is  a  winter  fair  of  which  we  hear 
nothing,  but  which  is  the  second  largest  fair  in  the 
world.  The  Irbit  fair  lasts  a  month,  from  January  20 
to  February  20,  and  though  small  compared  withNijni, 
nevertheless  shows  a  business  of  40,000,000  rubles  a 
year.  Like  the  real  city  of  Nijni  Novgorod,  which  is 
perched  on  a  bluff,  overlooking  the  fair-city,  which  oc- 
cupies a  peninsular  at  the  junction  of  the  Oka  and 
Volga,  Irbit  amounts  to  nothing  except  during  the 
brief  life  of  the  fair. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


HOLY  RUSSIA." 


ITH  the  completion  of  the  equestrian  tour  from 


VV  Moscow  to  Sevastopol,  and  the  return  to  Moscow 
by  way  of  the  Don  and  Volga  to  Nijni  Novgorod, 
thence  by  rail  to  the  starting  point,  the  "  grand  tour  " 
through  the  Czar's  European  dominions  was  ended. 
And  as  we  return  westward  by  rail,  halting  briefly  at 
Moscow,  St.  Petersburg,  and  Warsaw,  a  brief  record 
of  impressions,  in  addition  to  the  observations  recorded 
on  the  ride,  will  serve  to  round  out  and  complete  the 
object  of  our  visit. 

A  foreigner  visiting  Russia  for  the  first  time  is 
always  deeply  impressed  by  the  outward  and  visible 
signs  of  religion  that  confront  him  at  every  turn. 
Long  before  he  reaches  St.  Petersburg  the  golden 
domes  of  its  splendid  churches  and  cathedrals,  twink- 
ling brightly  in  the  sunlight,  have  been  visible  from 
the  deck  of  the  steamer  or  from  the  windows  of  the 
train.  He  admires  from  afar  these  costly  evidences  of 
the  religious  character  of  a  great  nation,  and  they  are 
among  the  first  places  he  visits  after  his  arrival. 

St.  Isaac's  and  the  Kazan  Cathedral  of  St.  Peters- 
burg, and  St.  Saviour's  of  Moscow,  each  in  turn  daz- 
zles and  bewilders  you  by  the  splendor  and  wealth  of 
gold  altars,  ikons  all  ablaze  with  diamonds  and  every 
variety  of  precious  stones,  priceless  paintings,  columns 


282  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


of  malachite,  millions  on  millions  lavished  on  marble 
and  granite. 

The  isvoshchic  who  drives  you  about  the  city  is  for- 
ever removing  his  hat  and  crossing  himself  as  the 
drosky  passes  a  church  or  a  holy  picture  in  a  shrine. 
The  throngs  of  people  in  the  streets ;  merchants, 
soldiers,  sailors,  peasants,  clerks,  truckmen,  officers, 
gentlemen,  ladies,  boys,  nurse-maids,  the  whole  het- 
erogeneous population  of  a  city,  follow  your  coach- 
man's example.  Passing  in  and  out  of  the  churches 
are  never-ceasing  streams  of  people  going  or  coming 
on  errands  of  devotion.  Before  the  principal  shrines 
on  the  street  corners  a  throng  is  never  absent. 

Hung  up  like  a  picture  in  one  corner  of  your  room 
at  the  hotel,  not  always  in  St.  Petersburg,  but  always 
in  the  provinces,  is  a  holy  ikon,  and  if  you  are  the 
guest  of  a  Russian  family,  uncorrupted  with  European 
influence,  a  little  ikon  very  likely  will  be  fastened  to 
the  head  of  your  bed.  In  short,  you  have  arrived  in 
Holy  Russia  ;  Russia,  the  Orthodox  ;  Russia,  the  home 
and  the  champion  and  defender  of  the  "  only  true 
Christian  religion." 

As  for  you,  whatever  else  you  may  be,  Catholic, 
Protestant,  Hebrew,  Moslem,  or  nothing  in  particular, 
you  are,  in  the  eyes  of  these  holy  people,  whose  gov- 
ernment, after  looking  over  its  black  list  to  make  sure 
that  you  are  not  an  active  champion  of  liberty  or 
enlightenment,  has  permitted  you  to  cross  the  frontier, 
a  heretic.  Since  nobody  troubles  to  reproach  you, 
however,  nor  to  convert  you  from  the  errors  of  your 
own  religion,  you  can  easily  assume  the  attitude  of  a 
non-belligerent,  and  set  about  fathoming,  without  bias 


•  HOLY  RUSSIA. 


or  prejudice,  the  depth  or  shallowness  of  the  sweeping 
claims  of  the  Orthodox. 

That  the  Russians  are  strict  observers  of  the  out- 
ward forms  of  religion  there  is  no  room  for  dispute  ; 
but  are  they  really  a  religious  people  ?  The  first  doubt 
probably  finds  its  way  into  your  mind  through  the 
medium  of  the  extremely  pious  coachman,  who  has 
been  driving  you  about  to  visit  the  gorgeous  cathedrals. 
Though  he  has  removed  his  perky  isvoshchic's  hat 
twenty  times  and  made  twenty  crosses  with  every 
mark  of  reverence  during  the  hour  of  his  engagement, 
when  you  come  to  pay  him  off  he  will  not  unlikely 
assure  you  that  you  engaged  him  not  one  but  two 
hours  ago,  and  all  but  literally  pick  your  pocket.  The 
smile  of  roguish  enjoyment  that  comes  into  his  face  is 
in  no  way  abashed  by  the  sign  of  the  Cross  which  he 
immediately  makes,  and  if  he  has  swindled  you  to  his 
heart's  satisfaction  he  will  very  likely  jog  along  to  the 
nearest  shrine  and  make  several  signs  of  the  Cross. 

Though  this  happens  at  a  very  early  stage  of  your 
investigations,  a  glimmer  of  light  begins  to  break  over 
your  understanding,  and  awakens  a  suspicion  that  all 
this  show  of  holiness  springs  less  from  fear  of  God  than 
fear  of  evil  spirits.  This  idea  grows  upon  you  in  pro- 
portion to  the  length  of  your  stay  in  the  country,  and 
increases  with  the  growth  of  your  acquaintance  with 
the  people.  And  if  you  stay  long  enough,  and  investi- 
gate the  subject  as  thoroughly  as  may  be,  your  first 
suspicion  is  very  apt  to  be  confirmed. 

The  educated  Russians  may  be  dismissed  from  the 
subject  of  religion  sans  ceremonie*  As  a  class  they 
represent  the  extreme  section  of  atheism,  free  thought. 


284  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


11  advanced  ideas,"  etc.,  of  the  age  ;  and  of  those  who 
bare  heads  before  churches  and  ikons,  one  half  do  it 
as  a  matter  of  policy  and  the  others  because  it  is  less 
trouble  to  drift  with  the  stream  than  to  stand  still  in 
it,  and  altogether  too  much  of  a  strain  to  think  of 
swimming  against  it. 

Apart  from  this  Voltairian  fringe,  the  mass  of  the 
Russian  people  are  passing  through  much  the  same 
moral  and  religious  transformation  that  Western 
Europe  passed  through  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Allowing 
for  a  difference  in  social  conditions,  the  Empire  of  the 
Czar  presents  a  similar  picture  of  splendid  religious 
edifices  towering  over  the  habitations  of  squalid 
poverty  ;  of  large  monasteries  full  of  treasures  of  gold, 
silver,  and  jewels,  rich  abbots  and  fat  monks,  standing 
in  the  midst  of  the  broadest  and  fairest  portions  of 
the  land.  The  Russian  moujik  of  to-day  is  about  as 
full  of  superstitions  and  the  dread  of  the  Evil  One  as 
was  the  villein  of  the  West  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  his  conceptions  of  religion  are  leavened,  as  those 
of  the  villein  were,  with  the  lingering  remains  of 
paganism. 

His  creed  is  largely  composed  of  superstitions  and 
demonology.  To  him  the  holy  ikon,  that  is  never  ab- 
sent from  his  humble  abode,  is  a  mysterious,  living 
thing,  representing  the  saint,  after  whom  it  is  pat- 
terned, not  only  in  form,  but  in  spirit  and  power. 

St.  Nicholas  is  the  moujik's  favorite  saint,  and  a 
"  Nicholai  ikon  "  is  found  in  nearly  every  peasant's 
house  in  Russia.  It  consists  of  a  small  picture  of  the 
saint,  a  figure  holding  in  one  hand  a  church  and  in 
the  other  a  sword,  set  in  a  deep  box-like  frame,  and 


1  HOLY  RUSSIA. 


gaudily  decorated  with  brass,  silver,  tinsel,  or  wax 
flowers. 

The  peasants  burn  tapers  before  it,  and  place  offer- 
ings  of  food,  etc.,  before  it,  much  as  the  Hindoo  ryot 
of  India  does  before  his  household  idol.  And  the  place 
that  the  ikon  holds  in  the  Russian  moujik's  mind 
seemed  to  me  to  differ  very  little  indeed  from  that  of 
the  idol  in  the  ryot's. 

One  day,  in  the  province  of  Kurskh,  while  drinking 
kwass  in  a  peasant's  house,  I  asked  the  housewife  why 
she  kept  a  taper  burning  before  the  Nicholai  ikon. 

She  immediately  made  the  sign  of  the  Cross.  The 
ikon  had  been  very  good  to  them  that  summer,  she 
said  ;  the  crops  were  good,  and  the  eldest  son,  who  had 
been  away  several  years  in  the  army,  had  returned  and 
brought  home  thirty  rubles.  I  asked  her  if  the  ikon 
was  a  living  thing,  capable  of  influencing  the  affairs  of 
the  family.  She  seemed  almost  frightened  at  the  ques- 
tion, as  some  good  old  soul  in  America,  who  from  in- 
fancy had  lived  and  prayed  in  simple  faith,  would  if  sud- 
denly challenged  to  prove  the  existence  of  God.  Again 
she  rapidly  made  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  but  gave  no  an- 
swer. I  asked  her  the  question  in  another  form.  She 
shook  her  head. 

"  Such  things  are  not  for  ignorant  people  like  me  to 
say,"  she  replied.  Determined  to  coiner  her  if  pos- 
sible, I  then  asked  her  how  many  rubles  she  had  paid 
for  it,  and  where  she  had  bought  it.  But  it  was  a 
family  heirloom,  inherited  from  her  husband's  people. 

Although  Christianity  has  been  the  religion  of  Rus- 
sia for  more  than  eight  centuries,  the  customs  and 
superstitions  of  Old  pagan  times  continue  to  exercise 


286 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


considerable  influence  on  the  every-day  life  and  sur- 
roundings of  the  peasantry.  With  all  their  church 
ceremonies  and  outward  observance  of  the  official 
religion,  and  their  self-denomination  of  "  the  Ortho- 
dox," the  superstitious  moujik  is  only  a  half-converted 
heathen.  So  much  is  this  the  case  that  it  is  sometimes 
difficult  to  define  where  paganism  ends  and  Chris- 
tianity begins  in  his  creed. 

For  instance,  not  only  does  he  regard  the  Christian 
ikons  much  as  his  ancestors  of  the  old  pagan  days  did 
their  idols,  but  he  enthrones  them  in  precisely  the 
same  place  in  his  house  that  they  used  to  occupy.  In 
the  home  of  the  pagan  Slavs  the  household  idols  used 
to  stand  on  a  bench  or  shelf  in  what  was  and  is  still 
known,  as  the  "  Upper  Corner,"  the  farther  right-hand 
corner  from  the  door,  and  facing  the  big  stove  which 
occupies  the  central  part  of  the  house  and  around 
which  the  rooms  are  built.  Then,  as  now,  this  was 
the  sacred  corner  of  the  house,  and  the  holy  ikons  of 
the  present  day  have  merely  dethroned  the  pagan 
images  and  occupy  the  same  shelf  in  the  same  corner. 

This  corner  is  also  referred  to  as  the  "  Great  Corner," 
or  the  "  Beautiful  Corner,"  and  no  member  of  the 
family  thinks  of  crossing  the  threshold  to  enter  the 
room  without  making  toward  it  the  sign  of  the  Cross. 

Near  this  corner  is  set  the  family  dinner-table, 
another  custom  that  connects  the  present  with  the 
past,  when  the  heathen  Slavs  used  to  transfer  the  idols 
from  the  shelves  to  the  table  during  meal  times.  The 
moujik  of  to-day  does  not  place  the  ikons  on  his  dinner- 
table,  but  he  believes  the  souls  of  his  ancestors,  and  of 
any  members  of  the  family  who  have  died,  are  hiding 


''HOLY  RUSSIA." 


287 


behind  the  ikons,  and  bread  or  little  saucers  of  food 
are  often  placed  on  the  shelf  where  the  holy  pictures 
stand.  Small  loaves  of  holy  bread,  made  of  fine  white 
flower,  purchased  from  the  monks  in  the  monasteries, 
are  favorite  articles  of  food  to  keep  on  the  ikon  shelves. 
To  make  those  loaves  more  acceptable  to  the  departed, 
inscriptions  are  sometimes  written  on  the  smooth  white 
crust  with  pen  and  ink  by  the  monks  or  the  village 
priest. 

In  religious  matters  the  more  ignorant  of  the  Russian 
peasants  still  waver,  so  to  speak,  between  the  devil 
and  the  deep  sea.  They  arc  afraid  to  make  themselves 
too  familiar  with  the  village  priest  lest  they  give  mor- 
tal offense  to  the  old  pagan  gods,  which  have  now 
taken  the  form  of  various  mischievous  and  malignant 
spirits  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  protect  themselves 
from  the  evil  designs  of  these  they  are  eternally  mak- 
ing the  sign  of  the  Cross,  and  spending  their  scant  earn- 
ings on  candles  to  burn  before  the  shrines  of  protect- 
ing saints. 

Though  centuries  of  time  have  naturally  modified 
this  fear,  it  would  seem  to  be  a  matter  of  doubtful 
credit  to  the  "  only  true  Church"  that  its  children  and 
chief  supporters,  the  very  Orthodox,  on  whose  patient 
shoulders  it  rests,  still  shy  at  its  priests  lest  the  agents 
of  the  Evil  One  be  offended.  In  many  instances  the 
peasants  have  transferred,  in  a  foggy  way,  the  attributes 
and  functions  of  their  ancient  gods  to  the  saints  of  the 
Christian  Church,  or  to  reverse  the  transformation, 
have  simply  bestowed  the  names  of  the  saints  on  their 
old  pagan  deities.  In  transferring  their  allegiance  from 
the  old  faith  to  the  new,  they  have  not  always  escaped 


288 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


getting  matters  curiously  muddled.  Thus  the  Prophet 
Elias  has  succeeded  to  the  office  of  Perun,  the  ancient 
god  of  thunder.  St.  Elias  is  now  the  Russian  peas- 
ants' "  clerk  of  the  weather."  He  it  is  who  gives  or 
withholds  the  rain  necessary  to  the  growing  of  their 
crops.  And  when  it  thunders  and  lightens,  it  is  St. 
Elias  driving  in  his  chariot  across  the  heavens. 

A  Russian  peasant  will  not  harm  a  pigeon,  nor  would 
he  think  of  eating  one,  even  if  suffering  from  want  of 
food.  All  through  Russia,  and  particularly  in  the 
lower  forest  zone  south  of  Moscow,  the  country  is  full 
of  pigeons,  that  enjoy  complete  immunity  from  moles- 
tation. In  the  country  they  are  as  tame  as  the  semi- 
domestic  pigeons  owned  by  breeders  in  American  cities. 

The  pigeon  has  always  been  a  sacred  bird  in  Russia. 
In  the  old  pagan  times  it  was  consecrated  to  Perun, 
the  god  of  thunder,  just  mentioned.  When  the  mis- 
sionaries of  the  Cross  invaded  the  country  and  prevailed 
against  Perun  and  his  associates,  the  luckjr  pigeon  lost 
nothing  of  its  sacred  character  by  the  new  order  of 
things.  The  converts,  by  some  occult  process  of 
reasoning,  came  to  associate  it  with  their  idea  of  the 
Third  Person  of  the  Trinity.  The  sacred  character  of 
the  pigeon,  like  the  office  of  "  weather  clerk,"  has  been 
brought  over  from  the  old  religion  to  the  new  and 
consecrated  to  the  Third  Person  of  the  Trinity,  which 
the  majority  of  the  peasants  think  to  be  St.  Nicholas. 

Readers  will  remember  stories  that  have  occasionally 
reached  us  from  Russia  of  atrocities  committed  by 
fanatical  peasants  in  the  villages  of  the  interior.  On 
one  occasion  the  burning  of  a  poor  old  woman  startled 
the  Western  World  and  taxed  the  credulity  of  the 


'HOLY  RUSSIA. 


289 


newspaper-reading  public.  Then  a  man  or  woman 
was  buried  alive  ;  and  we  heard  of  a  woman  severely 
mangled  by  a  wolf  while  rescuing  a  child  from  attack, 
left  to  perish  in  an  out-house  because  no  moujik  would 
admit  her  into  his  house.  On  this  horseback  ride, 
which  put  me  for  several  weeks  in  contact  with  the 
peasantry,  I  managed  to  pick  up  more  or  less  informa- 
tion concerning  their  peculiar  superstitions. 

Although  the  peasants  have  certainly  advanced  a 
step  or  two  in  knowledge  and  understanding  during 
the  thirty  years  since  their  emancipation,  the  powers 
of  darkness  still  hold  well-nigh  undisputed  sway  over 
the  minds  of  a  majority  of  the  rural  population  of 
Russia.  Ignorance  links  arms  with  superstition,  and 
the  two  revel  in  the  interior  villages  whenever  the 
normal  apathy  of  the  moujik  brain  is  disturbed  by  fear 
or  suspicion.  Though  he  is  sitting  on  the  threshold 
of  the  twentieth  century,  and  the  humblest  tillers  of 
the  soil  in  lands  not  far  from  him  learned  years  ago 
that  the  world  they  live  in  is  a  planet  revolving  around 
the  sun,  the  moujik  still  thinks  that  it  rests  on  the 
backs  of  three  whales,  or  monster  turtles,  in  the  ocean. 

No  limit  exists  to  the  absurdities  that  find  expres- 
sion in  the  beliefs  and  superstitions  of  such  a  people. 
The  women  and  girls,  of  course,  arc  the  most  supersti- 
tious. Unreasoning  faith  makes  them  tenaciously 
loyal  to  their  old  pagan  traditions.  In  Little  Russia  it 
was  the  rather  uncomplimentary  lot  of  myself  and 
companion  to  come  daily  under  the  suspicion  of  being 
the  Evil  One,  Antichrist,  the  "  Cattle  Plague,"  or 
other  malignant  spirit  in  disguise. 

In  many  of  the  postayali  dvors  of  Little  Russia 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


a  young  peasant  woman  performs  the  functions  of 
hostler.  One  of  the  small  diversions  of  the  day's  ride 
would  be  to  speculate  on  the  form  these  manifesta- 
tions of  fear  would  assume  in  the  next  girl  hostler. 
There  was  nothing  fantastic  about  our  appearance  ; 
we  were  simply  strange  horsemen  in  a  country  where 
strangers  are  rare,  and  were  dressed  differently  from 
anybody  they  had  ever  seen. 

The  consternation  of  the  girl  on  opening  the  tall 
gate  in  response  to  our  summons,  and  suddenly  find- 
ing herself  in  the  presence  of  a  pair  of  the  super- 
natural beings  of  the  popular  witchcraft,  often  caused 
us  to  laugh  outright,  and  always  provoked  a  smile.  A 
wild  sort  of  fear  came  into  her  eyes,  and  she  would 
shrink  behind  the  gate.  The  first  impulse  would  be  to 
make  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  but  fearful  lest  we,  being 
Antichrists,  might  take  offense  at  this,  she  would 
wait  until  we  had  passed  in,  when,  fancying  herself 
unnoticed,  the  holy  symbol  would  be  furtively  and 
rapidly  made. 

This  sort  of  girl  would  be  rooted  to  the  spot  with 
fear.  Other  girls,  of  more  robust  intellects,  occasion- 
ally took  to  their  heels,  scampering  away  into  the 
house  like  wild  creatures.  During  our  stay  these 
superstitious  damsels  would  be  in  an  exceedingly  un- 
comfortable frame  of  mind.  Fearful  of  coming  near 
us,  they  were  equally  fearful  lest  their  all  too  evident 
reluctance  to  serve  us  might  give  offense  and  cause 
us  maliciously  to  "  wither  their  souls,"  or  bring  them 
other  evil  fortune.  As  an  occasional  phenomenon,  we 
would  find  a  girl  who  would  be  neither  afraid  of  us  nor 
of  submitting  to  the  camera. 


'HOLY  RUSSIA." 


The  Russian  peasants  still  believe  in  the  agency  of 
witchcraft  and  sorcery,  and  when  visited  by  an  epi- 
demic, such  as  the  smallpox,  cholera,  or  cattle  plague, 
a  stranger  appearing  in  their  midst  alone  is  sure  to  be 
regarded  with  suspicion.  And  if  the  stranger  happens 
to  be  a  "  tall,  shaggy  old  man  "  or  a  "  withered  old 
woman  with  flashing  eyes,"  or  otherwise  resembles  the 
creatures  of  the  popular  superstition  who  are  associated 
with  these  malignant  maladies,  the  fanatical  peasants 
would  not  hesitate  to  bury  the  unfortunate  wretch 
alive. 

On  the  base  of  a  memorial  to  Czar  Nicholas,  in  St. 
Petersburg,  is  portrayed  a  scene  in  which  the  Czar 
quells  a  tumult  among  the  peasants  by  raising  his  arm 
in  anger.  It  depicts  an  actual  occurrence  of  his  reign 
in  the  streets  of  St.  Petersburg,  at  the*  time  of  the 
cholera,  when  the  moujiks  rose  in  tumult  against  the 
police  because  they  refused  to  arrest  persons  who  had 
been  seen  "carrying  cholera  powder  into  a  house  "  for 
the  purpose  of  spreading  the  disease. 

Certain  curious  rites  are  still  faithfully  practiced  in 
many  Russian  villages  to  ward  off  the  "cattle  plague," 
which  the  moujiks  believe  to  wander  about  the  coun- 
try in  human  form.  Among  the  Malo  Russians  the 
cattle  plague  is  an  old  woman  who  wears  red  boots, 
and  can  walk  on  the  water.  Hence  an  old  hag-like 
woman  who  should  turn  up  in  a  Russian  village  in  red 
boots  would,  especially  in  time  of  an  epidemic,  be  in 
danger  of  her  life.  Stories  are  current  among  the 
people  of  moujiks  who  unwittingly  gave  a  night's 
lodging  to  this  weird  creature,  and  in  the  morning 
every  member  of  the  family  was  dead. 


292 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


In  some  districts  remedial  measures  are  periodically 
taken  against  a  visitation  of  the  murrain.  The  cattle 
are  all  driven  into  the  village,  and  a  big  circle  is  made 
around  it  with  a  plow,  which  is  dragged  by  the 
oldest  woman  in  the  community.  All  the  female 
villagers  follow  in  procession  behind  the  plow,  carry- 
ing ikons,  chanting  weird  incantations,  and  beating  tin 
pans  and  cooking  vessels.  One  old  woman  bestrides  a 
broom  a  la  witch,  and  a  widow,  wearing  nothing  but 
a  horse-collar  around  her  neck,  keeps  pace  with  the 
one  who  is  dragging  the  plow.  If  a  dog  or  a  cat, 
frightened  by  the  noise,  rushes  out,  it  is  immediately 
seized  and  killed,  on  the  supposition  that  it  is  the 
cattle  plague  in  disguise,  trying  to  escape. 

In  other  districts  casting  a  black  cock  alive  into  a 
bonfire  at  the  end  of  certain  ceremonies  is  believed  to 
be  efficacious  in  warding  off  many  contagious  diseases. 
Bonfires  are  built  in  the  village,  and  young  women  in 
night-dresses  drag  a  plow  and  carry  a  holy  picture, 
with  much  unearthly  screeching,  after  which  the  un- 
fortunate rooster  is  cast  into  the  flames.  In  some 
villages,  when  a  visit  of  the  cattle  plague  is  to  be 
dreaded,  if  a  stray  cow  happens  to  be  found  among  the 
herd,  it  is  burned  alive,  as  the  peasants  believe  that  the 
"  cattle  death  "  has  thus  assumed  the  form  of  a  cow 
to  escape  detection. 

One  of  the  most  curious  and  widespread  beliefs  of 
the  peasants  is  that  every  house  contains  a  domovoi 
or  house-spirit.  Russian  peasants  catch  glimpses  of 
the  domovoi  about  as  often  as  Americans  see  ghosts, 
but  they  all  believe  in  his  existence.  The  domovoi  is 
described  as  a  little  old  man,  no  bigger  than  a  five- 


"J/OLV  RUSSIA." 


293 


year-old  boy.  Sometimes  he  is  seen  wearing  a  red 
shirt,  with  a  blue  girdle,  like  a  moujik  on  holidays. 
At  other  times  he  sports  a  suit  of  blue.  He  has  a 
white  beard  and  yellow  hair  and  glowing"  eyes. 

Though  mostly  invisible,  the  peasants  firmly  believe 
that  he  is  always  about  the  premises  and  busying  himself 
in  their  affairs.  His  usual  hiding-place  is  understood 
to  be  behind  the  big  brick  stove  that  forms  the  chief 
feature  of  a  Russian  cottage.  When  the  people  are 
asleep  he  issues  forth  and  conducts  himself  amicably  or 
otherwise,  according  to  the  humor  he  happens  to  be 
in.  The  domovoi  is  mischievous  as  a  monkey,  and 
like  that  animal  is  inclined  to  fly  into  a  passion  at  very 
short  notice  if  he  is  not  satisfied  with  his  surroundings 
and  treatment.  Many  peasant  families  after  eating 
supper  always  leave  a  portion  of  food  on  the  table  for 
the  domovoi,  who  would  otherwise  consider  himself 
ill-treated  and  disturb  their  sleep  by  pounding  on  the 
table  with  his  fist. 

In  some  of  the  peasants'  stables  are  little  glasses  or 
saucers  of  oil,  the  use  of  which  is  a  mystery  to  the 
uninitiated  stranger.  They  arc  found  in  villages  where 
the  domovois  are  believed  to  be  fond  of  horses  and 
cattle  and  of  visiting  the  stables  at  night.  As  the 
domovoi  likes  oil  the  saucers  are  put  in  the  stables  to 
keep  him  in  good  humor  and  to  induce  him  to  be  kind 
to  the  horses  and  cattle.  If  angry,  he  has  been  known 
to  take  a  horse  out  and  ride  it  nearly  to  death  ;  the 
peasant  finding  it  panting  and  covered  with  foam  in 
the  morning. 

Though  troublesome  if  not  well  treated,  the  domovoi 
usually  takes  the  kindliest  interest  in  the  affairs  of  the 


294  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


family  with  whom  he  has  found  shelter.  He  keeps 
count  over  the  poultry  to  see  that  nothing  is  stolen, 
and  many  moujiks,  when  they  kill  a  chicken  for  the 
table,  hang  its  head  up  in  the  back  yard  that  the  domo- 
voi  may  understand  what  has  become  of  it.  When  a 
death  occurs  in  the  family  the  domovoi  is  inconsolable 
for  many  days,  and  may  be  heard  at  times  wailing  be- 
hind the  stove. 

In  the  province  of  Orel,  through  which  my  road  lay, 
many  of  the  peasants  endeavor  to  have  all  their  live- 
stock as  nearly  as  possible  of  one  color.  This  applies 
even  to  the  poultry,  the  dog,  and  the  cat.  This  is  be- 
cause the  domovoi  of  their  house  is  believed  to  like  that 
color  best,  and  will  be  pleased  at  this  deference  to  his 
taste.  The  manner  of  finding  out  what  color  the  do- 
movoi likes  best  is  one  of  the  ceremonies  of  Easter 
Sunday.  On  that  day  the  peasants  hang  up  in  the 
stable  something  perishable  in  a  piece  of  rag.  When 
maggots  appear  they  judge  from  their  color  what  is 
most  likely  to  be  the  preference  of  the  domovoi. 

If  ill  luck  seems  to  attend  the  rearing  of  their  do- 
mestic animals,  it  is  believed  that  a  strange  domovoi 
of  a  malignant  disposition  has  appeared  in  the  house- 
hold. A  shovel  or  other  household  implement  is  then 
dipped  in  tar.  During  the  night  the  strange  domovoi 
will  rub  himself  against  it,  and,  taking  offense  at  the 
insult,  will  leave  the  premises. 

On  certain  nights  of  the  year  the  kindest  of  domo- 
vois  will  become  malicious,  and  special  precautions 
have  to  be  taken  to  appease  them.  In  some  districts 
little  cakes,  baked  expressly  for  the  domovoi,  are  placed 
near  his  retreat,  on  the  stove,  on  the  eve  of  the  Epiph- 


"HOLY  RUSSIA."  295 

any.  January  28  is  another  date  on  which  the  house- 
hold domovois  of  certain  parts  of  Russia  are  believed 
to  get  into  tantrums.  When  angry,  they  sometimes 
stop  the  breath  of  the  sleeping  members  of  the  house- 
hold and  produce  nightmare.  On  January  28,  there- 
fore, a  pot  of  mush  or  stewed  millet,  to  which  he  is 
very  partial,  is  set  on  the  table  for  the  domovoi  before 
the  family  retire. 

Wizards  and  witches  still  flourish  in  rural  Russia  in 
great  numbers.  They  interfere  in  all  manner  of  ways 
with  the  moujik's  prosperity  and  peace  of  mind — 
almost  as  much  so,  in  fact,  as  his  other  and  more  tangi- 
ble enemies,  the  priest  and  the  policeman. 

When  a  milch  cow  dries  up  sooner  than  the  peasant 
thinks  she  ought  to,  he  has  no  doubt  whatever  that 
she  is  being  milked  by  the  witches.  To  keep  the 
witches  out  of  the  cow-shed  crosses  are  chalked  or 
painted  on  the  doors.  If  the  witches  brave  the  crosses, 
indicated  by  a  lack  of  improvement  in  the  milk-giving 
capacity  of  the  cow,  the  moujik  will  try  the  experi- 
ment of  a  church  candle,  such  as  arc  burned  before  the 
shrines  and  ikons  of  the  saints. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  visitor  sees  these  crosses  every- 
where in  rural  Russia.  A  cross  is  erected  on  the  frame- 
work of  a  house  in  process  of  building,  and  crosses  are 
seen  on  the  ceilings  of  inns,  houses,  sheds,  stables — 
everywhere.  The  first  impression  of  all  naturally  is  that 
you  have  stumbled  upon  an  extremely  God-fearing, 
reverential  set  of  people.  This  impression  is  intensified 
by  the  spectacle  of  the  people  themselves  making  the 
sign  of  the  Cross  at  well-nigh  every  turn,  and  at  every 
act  performed. 


296 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


There  is  reverence  in  all  this  symbolism  of  the  Holy 
Cross.  But  you  awaken  to  a  clearer  conception  of  the 
religious  ideas  of  the  peasantry  of  Russia  when  you 
finally  come  to  understand  that  the  cross  is  painted  on 
the  stable  door  to  keep  out  witches,  and  that  the  crosses 
on  the  ceiling  are  to  prevent  these  same  malicious 
sprites  from  entering  the  house. 

Amulets  are  still  worn,  attached  to  pieces  of  thread, 
about  the  neck  by  many  moujiks,  in  addition  to  the 
little  pectoral  cross.  The  old  spell  used  by  the  peas- 
ant's pagan  ancestors  is  very  likely  tied  to  the  same 
neck-thread  as  the  cross.  Both  are  to  preserve  him 
from  sickness  and  disaster.  As  between  the  two  he 
has  more  faith  in  the  cross  nowadays,  but  he  still  clings, 
with  the  stubborn  conservatism  of  ignorance,  to  the 
1  symbols  of  ancient  heathen  faith,  nor  does  it  ever  oc- 
cur to  him  that  to  tie  a  bat's-wing  amulet  obtained 
from  the  village  sorcerer  to  the  little  cross  obtained 
from  the  priest,  and  hang  them  both  about  his  neck  is 
an  insult  to  his  religion.  When  he  bathes  in  the  river 
he  makes  the  sign  of  the  Cross  to  keep  the  water-witches 
from  strangling  him. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 


ORTHODOX  CHURCH  AND  PRIESTS. 

ON  the  streets  of  every  city,  every  town,  and  in  every 
village,  from  one  end  of  Russia  to  another,  the 
foreign  traveler  passes  men  whose  habit  is  sufficiently 
distinct  from  others  to  attract  attention.  The  habit  in 
question  consists  of  a  long  cloth  gown  that  reaches  to 
the  ankles,  a  soft  felt  billycock  hat,  and  heavy  top 
boots.  The  gown  usually  is  black,  but  is  sometimes 
blue,  and  is  girdled  snugly  about  the  waist.  Whether 
you  meet  one  of  these  odd  figures  on  the  most  fashion-  • 
able  street  in  St.  Petersburg,  or  in  a  remote  village  of 
a  distant  province,  the  dress,  figure,  and  deportment 
are  identically  the  same. 

These  gentlemen  are  the  popes,  or  "  white  clergy  "  of 
Holy  Russia.  The  long  gown  and  severely  simple  at- 
tire are  supposed  to  be  in  imitation  of  the  Saviour 
when  on  earth,  and  the  likeness  is  increased  by  wear- 
ing long  hair. 

From  the  standpoint  of  an  outsider  the  Russian 
pope  cuts  a  comical,  not  to  say  contemptible,  figure  on 
the  world's  stage.  Viewing  him  from  a  plane  beyond 
his  sphere  of  influence  you  feel  like  laughing  him  off 
the  boards,  but  install  yourself  among  the  people  who 
are  forced  to  have  dealings  with  him  and  he  changes 
from  a  comical  to  a  serious  character,  whose  deserts 
would  be  hootings  and  carrots  rather  than  merriment. 

297 


298 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


But  because  the  pope  is  born  into  his  position  and  in- 
herits his  characteristics  from  many  generations  of 
sires  and  grandsires,  every  one  of  whom  was  as  incon- 
gruous and  out  of  place  in  the  garb  of  Christ  as  he,  it 
behooves  us  not  to  be  too  uncharitable  in  cur  judg- 
ment. 

The  Russian  priest  occupies  a  unique  and  unenvi- 
able position  in  the  society  of  his  own  country  as  well 
as  among  the  spiritual  representatives  of  the  earth. 
The  Romish  priest  and  the  Protestant  pastor,  who  take 
the  initiative  in  works  of  charity  and  keep  a  sharp  eye 
on  the  morals  of  their  parishioners,  would  find  in  the 
heart  and  the  deeds  of  the  Russian  pope  no  chord  of 
sympathy.  The  pope  rarely  preaches  sermons  and  he 
takes  no  part  in  charitable  works  nor  bothers  himself 
about  the  moral  welfare  of  the  people.  His  interest 
in  the  benefice  to  which  he  has  been  assigned  on  ordi- 
nation, probably  begins  and  ends  with  the  amount  of 
money  he  is  able  to  squeeze  out  of  his  parishioners. 
As  he  neither  pretends,  nor  is  expected  to  make  any 
pretense,  to  a  life  of  morality,  his  methods  of  adding 
to  his  income  are  often  strangely  at  variance  with  our 
ideas  of  what  pertains  to  the  office  and  functions  of  a 
priest. 

In  some  districts  the  popes  receive  small  salaries 
from  the  government  and  in  others  grants  of  land,  off 
which,  with  the  addition  of  baptismal,  marriage,  burial, 
and  other  fees,  they  are  required  to  make  their  living. 
Short  of  stealing  and  robbery  with  violence,  the  more 
unscrupulous  of  the  clergy  resort  to  any  method  of 
extortion  and  money-getting.  Their  most  notorious 
methods  are  to  act  in  their  parishes  as  agents  for  the 


ORTHODOX  CHURCH  AND  PRIESTS.  299 


sale  of  certain  brands  of  vodka,  and  by  their  own  ex- 
ample and  all  manner  of  insinuating  measures  promote 
its  consumption  among  the  peasants. 

The  Imperial  Government  looks  with  indulgent  eye 
on  the  drunkenness  of  its  subjects,  and  resents  tem- 
perance agitation  with  almost  as  much  jealousy  as 
political,  the  reason  being  that  the  greater  part  of  its 
revenue  comes  from  the  tax  on  liquor.  The  priests, 
who  in  other  countries  are  ever  foremost  in  checking 
the  growth  of  intemperance,  in  Russia  promote  it  by 
every  means  short  of  pouring  vodka  down  the  people's 
throats.  With  a  view  to  commissions  on  its  sale,  the 
popes  excuse  its  consumption  by  the  too  willing 
moujik  on  the  most  specious  pretenses.  They  will 
even  quote  Scripture  to  them  to  prove  that  there  is 
no  harm  in  getting  drunk,  their  favorite  quotation  be- 
ing:  "  Not  that  which  goeth  into  the  mouth  of  a  man 
defileth  him  ;  but  that  which  cometh  out." 

The  size  of  the  pope's  income  depends  as  much  on 
the  ignorance,  superstition,  and  credulity  of  his  parish- 
ioners, coupled  with  his  own  shrewdness,  as  on  the  size 
and  population  of  the  parish.  His  legitimate  fees 
among  the  peasantry  are  three  rubles  for  officiating  at 
a  funeral,  one  ruble  at  christenings,  and  one  ruble  for  a 
private  morning  mass.  At  weddings  he  receives  any- 
thing up  to  ten  rubles,  and  at  betrothals  a  bottle  of 
red  wine.  In  addition  to  these,  however,  he  manages 
in  one  way  or  another  to  lay  the  moujiks  under  contri- 
bution to  the  extent  of  cultivating  his  land. 

A  pope  deems  it  no  disgrace  to  get  drunk,,  nor  does 
he,  by  loose  living,  lose  caste  in  the  estimation  of  his 
parishioners,  so  long  as  his  looseness  affects  nobody's 


300  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 

pocket  but  his  own.  In  fact,  in  Russia  as  elsewhere, 
and  among  popes  no  less  than  among  other  people, 
the  man  of  convivial  habits  is  apt  to  be  at  the  bottom 
a  generous  soul. 

As  a  class  the  popes  are  cordially  despised  by  the 
Russian  people.  The  peasantry  regards  them  not  as  spir- 
itual fathers,  but  as  corrupt  agents  of  the  Church,  just 
as  the  police  and  the  hordes  of  officials  who  prey  upon 
them  are  corrupt  agents  of  the  government.  One  set 
are  disreputable  tools  of  the  Church,  the  others  of  the 
Czar.  Both  Church  and  Czar  they  reverence,  but  they 
expect  nothing  but  extortion  and  corrupt  practices 
from  the  minions  of  either.  Among  the  peasants  the 
worst-hated  minions  of  the  civil  government  are  our 
friends  of  a  previous  chapter,  the  uriadniks,  a  horde  of 
nearly  6000  rural  police,  who,  in  1878,  were  let  loose 
among  them  with  almost  unbridled  powers  of  petty 
persecution.  The  uriadnik  has  become  a  byword 
among  the  people,  and  on  a  par  with  him,  in  the  esti- 
mation of  the  moujiks,  is  what  is  known  among  them  as 
the  "  merchant  pope." 

For  a  drunken,  dissolute  clergyman,  the  moujiks 
have  no  special  aversion,  because  in  their  eyes  drunk- 
enness, even  in  a  priest,  is  no  sin,  and  as  before  stated 
they  trouble  themselves  little  about  what  does  not  af- 
fect their  own  pockets.  It  is  because  the  practices  of 
the"  merchant  pope"  do  affect  their  pockets  that  they 
hold  him  in  special  abhorrence  above  others  of  the 
cloth. 

The  "  merchant  pope  "  is  a  priest  who  is  forever 
scheming  to  extort  money  from  his  parishioners.  His 
ways  of  reaching  their  pockets  are  multifarious,  and  his 


ORTHODOX  CHURCH  AND  PRIESTS.  301 

ingenuity  is  exercised  in  preying  on  the  credulity,  the 
fanaticism,  and  the  superstition  of  the  wooden-headed 
moujik.  The  "  merchant  pope"  nut  only  acts  as  agent 
for  the  sale  of  vodka,  for  the  greater  consumption  of 
which  he  multiplies  the  holidays  and  merry-makings  in 
his  district,  but  he  also  concerns  himself  in  the  sale  of 
ikons,  and  by  granting  bogus  certificates  of  communion. 

Every  Orthodox  Russian  is  required  by  law  to  pro- 
vide himself  with  a  certificate,  showing  that  he  has  par- 
taken of  the  holy  communion  within  the  year.  To 
backslide  from  the  church  is  a  penal  offense,  for  which 
thousands  of  Russians  have  been  transported  to  Siberia, 
and  a  subject  of  the  Czar  known  to  have  been  born  in 
the  Orthodox  faith,  found  by  the  police  without  a 
eucharistical  certificate  from  his  priest,  would  find  him- 
self in  trouble.  Under  the  surface,  dissent  is  rife  ;  and 
it  is  in  districts  where  dissatisfaction  with  the  senseless 
rituals  of  the  established  Church  abounds  that  the  com- 
mercial pope  flourishes  and  grows  rich  the  fastest. 
For  the  heretics  who  come  to  him,  rubles  in  hand,  he 
makes  out  bogus  certificates  of  communion,  and  those 
who  think  to  escape  notice  he  ferrets  out  and  levies 
upon. 

The  commercial  pope  bargains  and  chaffers  over  the 
fees  for  baptisms,  weddings,  and  burials,  and  every  re- 
ligious service  required  of  him  by  his  people  is  a  finan- 
cial speculation.  For  rubles  he  will  officially  condone 
all  offenses,  and  grant  absolution  for  all  manner  of  evil- 
doing.  Without  pay  he  will  neither  pray  for  rain  to 
revive  the  moujiks'  withering  crops  nor  burn  candles 
before  the  ikon  of  St.  Nicholas,  the  moujiks'  favorite 
saint.    Much  as  they  despise  him,  the  moujiks  believe 


302 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


him  to  be  the  medium  through  which  the  blessings  or 
the  curses  of  the  Church  and  the  saints  affect  them 
and  their  interests,  and  of  this  belief  the  commercial 
pope  takes  every  advantage  to  transfer  from  their  lean 
pockets  to  his  own  their  hard-earned  kopecks.  Per- 
haps it  was  studying,  at  close  range,  the  ungodly  trans- 
actions of  the  commercial  pope  that  brought  Count 
Tolstoi  to  the  conclusion  that  the  primary  duty  of 
every  minister  of  the  gospel  is  to  earn  his  own  living  as 
a  husbandman. 

To  the  foreigner  who  has  been  accustomed  to  regard 
the  wearers  of  the  cloth  with  something  akin  to  the 
same  reverence  that  he  feels  for  the  Church,  the  Rus- 
sian pope,  and  the  place  he  occupies  in  the  minds  of 
the  people,  is  something  of  an  enigma.  In  the  Russian 
mind  the  pope  seems  to  have  no  connection  with  the 
Church  beyond  a  financial  interest  in  its  forms  and 
ceremonies.  The  government  has  appointed  him 
official  purveyor  of  baptismal  forms,  marriage  rites, 
holy  water,  and  masses,  for  which  he  receives  fees,  and 
by  means  of  which  he  makes  capital  out  of  the  super- 
stition and  ignorance  of  the  peasantry. 

The  Church  they  reverence ;  but  the  pope  who 
stands  between  it  and  the  people  and  acts  the  middle- 
man in  dispensing  or  withholding  its  blessings,  is  the 
butt  of  the  national  satire  and  figures  largely  in  popu- 
lar songs  and  stories  as  a  charlatan  and  a  despicable 
fellow  generally.  The  Russian  who  has  committed 
some  grievous  sin,  and  is  prepared  to  go  to  any  ruinous 
length  in  regaining  the  favor  of  the  saint,  approaches 
the  pope  on  the  subject  of  special  masses  for  the  pur- 
pose in  much  the  same  spirit  as  he  would  approach  a 


ORTHODOX  CHURCH  AND  PRIESTS.  303 

rascally  dealer  in  spavined  and  broken-winded  horses. 
He  broaches  the  subject  cautiously  and  in  a  round- 
about manner,  lest  by  appearing  too  eager  he  betray  to 
the  pope  the  fact  that  his  services  are  urgently  re- 
quired; apiece  of  indiscretion  which  he  knows  only 
too  well  would  result  in  an  immediate  inflation  of  that 
gentleman's  fees. 

On  his  part,  the  pope,  by  means  of  long  practice  and 
an  hereditary  insight  into  the  workings  of  the  Russian 
conscience,  has  acquired  such  an  expert  ness  in  detect- 
ing the  very  things  that  these  would-be  cheapeners  of 
the  holy  functions  try  to  conceal  that  he  invariably 
gets  the  better  of  the  bargain.  It  is  this  prostitution 
of  the  holy  office  to  a  bargainingand  haggling  over  ru- 
bles and  kopecks  that  is  the  secret  of  the  pope's  unen- 
viable position.  All  business  in  Russia  is  transacted  on 
a  low  moral  basis.  Every  Russian  merchant  cheats  and 
overreaches,  as  a  matter  of  course,  nor  do  customers 
expect  anything  better  of  them.  The  moujik  feels  no 
resentment  against  the  man  who  tries  to  overreach 
him  in  a  bargain  for  a  red  shirt  ;  because  if  he  fails  in 
his  bargaining  with  one  merchant  he  goes  to  another. 
But  with  the  dealer  in  masses  and  sacraments  lie  is 
deprived  of  this  freedom  by  the  government,  which 
has  practically  given  the  pope  of  his  parish  a  monop- 
oly. If  the  mass  merchant  refuses  to  chant  and  burn 
candles  for  him,  save  at  extortionate  rates,  which  he 
very  often  does,  the  extortionate  rates  have  to  be 
paid. 

Russians  will  tell  you  that  cases  are  common  in  the 
villages  of  popes  refusing  to  bury  the  dead  and  ad- 
minister the  sacrament  to  the  dying  until  the  prices 


3°4 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


they  demanded  were  forthcoming.  Thus  it  has  come 
to  be  a  common  saying  among  the  people  that  "  the 
pope  takes  money  both  from  the  living  and  the  dead. 

From  what  the  author  saw  and  experienced  among 
the  Russians,  however,  I  am  far  from  taking  a  one- 
sided view  of  the  matter  between  popes  and  peo- 
ple. Take  the  popes  as  they  are,  without  any  pre- 
tense to  a  higher  degree  of  commercial  morality  than 
their  parishioners,  and  it  is  a  fair  battle  of  wits  between 
them.  If  the  popes  overreach  the  people  in  charging 
for  their  services,  there  are,  on  the  other  hand,  few 
communicants  among  their  flock  who  would  not,  if 
they  could,  bamboozle  the  pope  into  praying  for  him 
and  administering  the  sacrament  to  them  for  nothing. 
There  are  no  people  in  the  world  so  intent  on  getting 
something  from  some  one  else  for  nothing  as  the  aver- 
age subjects  of  the  Czar. 

In  addition  to  being  despised  by  the  people,  the  two 
orders  of  clergy  in  Russia — the  black  clergy  or  monks 
and  the  white  clergy  or  popes — hate  and  despise 
one  another.  The  popes  hate  the  monks  because  it  is 
from  their  ranks  that  all  the  higher  dignitaries  of  the 
Church  are  chosen,  and  because  the  monastic  orders 
attract  nearly  all  the  death-bed  bequests  of  the 
wealthy,  which  they  think  might  otherwise  come  their 
own  way.  This  abhorrence  is  repaid  with  interest  by 
the  monks,  who  affect  to  despise  the  popes  as  being 
the  "  small  rogues  of  the  Church,"  and  responsible  for 
the  scant  esteem  in  which  both  orders  are  held  by  the 
people. 

One  day,  during  the  ride  from  Moscow  to  the  Crimea, 
we  met  a  pope  on  the  road.    A  party  of  moujik  tramps 


ORTHODOX  CHURCH  AND  PRIESTS. 


who  were  ahead  of  us  met  him  first,  and,  after  they 
had  passed  him,  they,  without  any  visible  motive, 
wheeled  round  and  walked  straight  across  to  the  oppo- 
site side  of  the  road.  In  explanation  of  this  my  com- 
panion informed  me  that  it  is  considered  bad  luck  to 
meet  a  pope  on  the  road,  and,  by  crossing  his  trail  at 
right  angles,  thereby  forming  a  cross  behind  him,  the 
moujiks  hoped  to  avert  any  calamity  that  would  other- 
wise overtake  them  as  a  consequence  of  having  met 
him. 

Many  of  the  popes  are  men  of  fair  education,  but 
others  are  woefully  ignorant,  particularly  of  the  Scrip- 
tures. Sascha  told  me  of  a  village  pope  who  knew 
only  one  passage  of  Scripture,  and  this  he  used  to  re- 
peat over  and  over  again  as  a  regular  order  of  service. 
The  congregation  used  to  respond  with  the  same.  The 
passage  was,  "  And  Christ  went  down  to  Jerusalem.  ' 

One  day  the  pope  was  thrown  into  consternation  by 
hearing  that  a  nobleman  who  owned  an  estate  in  the 
district  was  coming  from  St.  Petersburg  and  would 
attend  mass  next  Sunday.  It  would  never  do  to  be- 
tray to  the  nobleman  the  fact  that  he  knew  but  one 
passage  of  Scripture.  He  consulted  a  brother  pope  in 
the  adjoining  parish.  This  gentleman  didn't  know  any 
Scripture  at  all,  but  advised  him,  as  the  easiest  plan,  to 
substitute  Bethlehem  for  Jerusalem  for  the  occasion  of 
the  nobleman's  visit. 

This  was  an  easy  thing  for  a  man  of  education  like 
the  pope,  but,  when  it  came  to  the  responses,  the 
thick-headed  moujiks  forgot  their  pastor's  instructions 
about  Bethlehem  and  bawled  out  the  word  they  had, 
from  long  usage,  grown  accustomed  to.    The  pope  was 


3o6 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


furious.  Forgetting  the  presence  of  the  nobleman,  he 
shouted  out  : 

"  You  wooden-heads  !  it  isn't  Jerusalem  to-day.  I 
told  you  it  was  to  be  Bethlehem  !  " 

Priests  of  this  class  are  known  to  the  Russians  as 
"  one-mass  popes." 

The  Orthodox  Greek  Church  of  the  Holy  Russian 
Empire  is  the  most  gigantic  monopoly  that  exists  on 
the  face  of  the  earth  at  the  present  day.  It  owns  the 
exclusive  right  to  regulate  the  morals,  direct  the  con- 
sciences, and  warp  the  souls  of  100,000,000  human 
beings.  It  has  a  patent,  supported  by  the  mighty 
power  of  the  Russian  government,  granting  to  it  the 
exclusive  right  and  title  to  the  religious  exploitation 
of  a  fourteenth  part  of  the  population  of  the  earth, 
and  the  power  to  punish  severely  the  least  infringe- 
ment of  its  rights. 

Monopoly  may  not  always  be  a  curse  in  commerce. 
Its  defenders  have  sometimes  even  been  able  to  make 
out,  owing  to  peculiar  and  exceptional  conditions, 
cases  where  it  may  have  been  a  blessing  in  disguise. 
But  there  can  be  no  manner  of  doubt  as  to  the  influ- 
ence and  the  results  of  the  monopoly  in  religion. 

The  blight  of  intolerance  has  smitten  the  priests 
with  moral  leprosy,  that  has  left  them  without  any 
resemblance  to  the  same  class  in  other  countries. 
Russia  is  the  only  country  in  Christendom  where  the 
servants  of  the  Church  and  the  wearers  of  the  cassock 
and  gown  neither  exercise,  nor  attempt  to  exercise,  a 
good  moral  influence  on  their  parishioners.  Excep- 
tions there  are  of  course,  but  they  are  exceedingly  rare. 

The  Russian  Church  is  at  one  with  the  government 


ORTHODOX  CHURCH  AND  PRIESTS. 


in  that  it  regards  the  people  merely  as  a  means  for  its 
own  support  and  aggrandizement.  The  two  are  gigan- 
tic Siamese  twins,  who  wax  fat  and  continue  to  grow 
in  power  at  the  expense  of  the  toiling  millions  of 
peasantry,  who  live  harder  and  enjoy  less  comfort  than 
any  set  of  people  whom  the  writer,  who  has  been  in 
twenty-four  countries,  can  call  to  mind,  unless  it  be  a 
certain  class  of  coolies  in  China.  One  loots  them  by 
means  of  the  tax-gatherer  and  the  police,  the  other  by 
means  of  the  priests,  and  by  trading  on  their  igno- 
rance, which  it  encourages,  and  their  superstitions, 
which  it  is  too  lazy  and  indifferent  to  root  out.  And 
while  one  forbids  the  victim  to  move  even  out  of  his 
house  into  another  without  permission,  or  to  escape 
through  any  channel  whatever,  the  other  has  the  mon- 
strous power  to  imprison  or  send  to  Siberia  any  one 
who  presumes  to  assist  him  out  of  the  slough  of  igno- 
rance and  superstition  that  keeps  him  helpless. 

To  convert  a  Russian  peasant  from  the  Greek 
Church  to  any  other  branch  of  the  Christian  religion 
is  a  penal  offense,  punishable  by  a  long  term  of  hard 
labor  in  Siberia.  If  he  is  already  a  sectarian,  the  peas- 
ant may  remain  so,  subject  to  various  humiliating 
restrictions.  What  the  Russian  Greek  Church  de- 
mands of  the  people  is  that  they  "  keep  quiet  "  and 
do  nothing.  "  Work  and  pay  for  masses  and  sacra- 
ments ;  give  money  to  enrich  churches,  and  buy  can- 
dles to  burn  before  the  ikons  of  the  saints  ;  but  don't 
think  ;  don't  read ;  and,  above  all,  make  no  move 
toward  worshiping  God  according  to  the  dictates  of 
your  own  conscience,  or  you  will  be  punished  and 
imprisoned." 


308  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Secured  in  its  monopolistic  power  and  position  by  the 
strong  arm  of  the  Government,  the  policy  of  the 
Church  has  become  that  of  the  dog  in  the  manger. 
Its  intolerance  of  propaganda  is  only  equaled  by  its 
lethargy.  It  will  neither  bestir  itself  to  the  better- 
ment of  the  people  who  have  been  given  into  its  power 
nor  permit  others  to  do  so.  Like  any  other  monopoly 
that  has  no  fear  of  competition,  it  refuses  to  trouble 
itself  about  the  quality  of  the  goods  it  supplies,  con- 
cerning itself  solely  with  the  question  of  warning  off 
infringers  of  its  prerogative. 

In  Southern  Russia,  however,  notwithstanding  the 
severe  penalties  enacted  against  apostacy,  a  very  large 
proportion  of  the  people  are,  either  openly  or  covertly, 
dissenters.  If  born  outside  the  province  of  the  Ortho- 
dox Church,  all  well  and  good  ;  there  is  no  need  of 
concealment  ;  but  if  a  convert  from  Orthodoxy,  peace 
and  security  from  imprisonment  is  usually  secured  by 
bribing  the  priest  to  make  out  false  certificates  of 
communion,  which  are,  so  to  speak,  "  religious  pass- 
ports." This  the  apostate  has  to  get  renewed  every 
year,  as  every  peasant  does  his  civil  passport  from  the 
police.  Selling  false  eucharistical  certificates  to  back- 
sliders from  the  established  Church  is  said  to  double 
the  income  of  many  parish  priests  in  Southern  Russia. 

All  dissenting  sects  are  known  as  heretics.  The 
more  numerous  are  the  Stundists  and  the  Molokani, 
or  milk-eaters,  so  called  because  they  drink  milk  on 
fast  days.  In  riding  across  the  steppes  of  Malo  Russia 
and  the  Crimea,  I  used  to  stumble  upon  the  villages  of 
these  dissenters,  as  well  as  of  German  colonists.  A 
most  curious  thing  to  me  was  that  you  could  tell  a 


ORTHODOX  CHURCH  AND  PRIESTS. 


3°9 


German  or  a  sectarian  colony  as  far  as  you  could  see  it, 
on  account  of  the  vast  difference  between  its  surround- 
ings and  those  of  an  Orthodox  moujik  village. 

Only  a  few  miles  across  the  steppe,  on  the  same  soil 
and  with  no  advantages  or  favors  from  nature,  you 
reach  a  village  that  seems  to  belong  to  another  country 
or  to  an  age  centuries  ahead  of  the  one  you  have  just 
left.  The  houses  are  built  with  some  pretext  to 
architectural  beauty ;  they  are  painted  white  and 
roofed  with  red  tiles.  The  windows,  which  in  the 
Orthodox  villages  were  broken,  stuffed  with  rags,  or 
covered  with  dirt,  are  as  clean  as  in  an  American 
house.  Each  house  stands  in  a  flower-garden,  neatly 
fenced,  and  avenues  of  trees  are  along  the  streets. 
Here,  too,  if  it  is  harvest  time,  you  will  find  the  peas- 
ants owning  a  threshing-machine  and  other  modern  ap- 
pliances for  saving  time  and  labor.  Hitherto,  though 
you  have  ridden  on  horseback  all  the  way  from  Mos- 
cow, you  have  seen  nothing  but  flails  and  rude  stone 
rollers  for  threshing,  and  the  grain  has  been  winnowed 
by  tossing  it  in  the  air  on  windy  days. 

The  secret  of  this  tremendous  transformation  is  that 
you  have  reached  the  colonies  of  the  sectarians,  who 
have  pulled  their  necks  out  of  the  yoke  of  the  monopo- 
listic church.  When  I  first  reached  one  of  these  clean 
and  prosperous  villages,  after  several  weeks'  experience 
among  the  Orthodox,  my  eyes  were  gladdened  as  at 
the  sight  of  an  oasis  in  the  desert. 

I  was  alone,  a  stranger  and  a  foreigner,  unable  to 
speak  the  language  beyond  making  known  my  wants. 
My  companion  and  interpreter  had  returned  to  Mos- 
cow.   As  I  expected,  I  was  received  with  suspicion. 


3io  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


For  all  they  knew  I  might  be  a  secret  agent  of  the 
government  coming  among  them  for  sinister  reasons 
as  spy.  These  sectarians  dread  an  agent  of  the  govern- 
ment more  than  the  Evil  One  himself. 

I  showed  them  my  American  passport,  which  puz- 
zled them  and  seemed  only  to  add  to  their  suspicions. 
At  length,  however,  I  was  taken  in.  The  house  was 
as  scrupulously  clean  as  a  house  in  Holland.  Shining 
brass  candlesticks  stood  in  the  broad  window-sills 
and  flower-pots  full  of  plants  gladdened  the  eyes  and 
added  to  the  cheerfulness  of  this  model  interior  of  a 
cottage.  Everything  that  could  be  polished  was  bright ; 
everything  of  linen,  as  white  as  soap  and  elbow-grease 
would  make  it. 

For  supper  I  had  white  bread,  fried  eggs,  cold  milk, 
and  the  only  eatable  butter  T  had  seen  since  leaving 
Moscow.  In  the  province  of  Ekaterinoslav  there  is  a 
maxim  applied  to  a  careful  housewife  :  "  She  is  good, 
like  a  Molokani  wife."  At  nightT  slept  between  clean, 
sweet  sheets,  a  luxury  that  I  had  given  up  all  hopes  of 
ever  enjoying  in  a  Russian  village.  Though  they  treated 
me  in  this  highly  acceptable  manner,  the  residents, 
however,  never  ceased  to  regard  me  with  suspicion. 
They  positively  declined  to  talk  about  themselves, 
though  it  is  fair  to  presume  that  I  might  have  had 
better  success  in  drawing  them  out  had  I  been  equal 
to  a  less  disjointed  way  of  asking  questions.  They 
were  Russians,  in  no  way  different  from  their  slovenly, 
ignorant  Orthodox  brethren,  except  in  the  difference 
that  had  been  brought  about  by  their  emancipation 
from  the  slavery  of  a  mediaeval  church.  The  contrast 
between  the  two  was  so  striking  and  so  sharply  defined 


ORTHODOX  CHURCH  AND  PRIESTS. 


that  the  only  night  I  spent  in  a  sectarian  village  is 
among  the  most  vivid  impressions  of  the  ride  across 
Russia. 

Every  traveler  in  Russia  has  noticed  this  same  dif- 
ference between  the  sectarian  communities  and  those 
of  the  Orthodox  peasantry.  It  admits  of  only  one  ex- 
planation. The  Orthodox  moujiks  of  Russia  are  at  the 
present  day,  in  spite  of  the  vaunted  emancipation  of 
the  serfs,  the  veriest  slaves  that  were  ever  chained  to 
the  earth.  No  negro  in  the  United  States  was  ever 
owned  and  exploited  as  is  the  average  Orthodox  peas- 
ant of  Russia  in  1890.  He  is  owned  jointly  by  a  pair  of 
hard  taskmasters,  of  which  one  exploits  his  body  and 
the  other  his  soul.  Of  personal,  political,  or  religious 
liberty,  he  is  about  as  destitute  as  he  was  when  he 
was  a  serf.  If  now  and  then  one  peasant  of  excep- 
tional brains  and  energy  manages  to  better  his  condi- 
tion, thousands  are  materially  worse  off  than  they  ever 
were  before.  The  moujik  has  simply  changed  masters. 
The  rod  has  been  taken  from  the  nobles  and  placed  in 
the  hands  of  the  tax  collector.  And  the  latter,  having 
no  personal  interest  in  him  beyond  exacting  Caesar's 
tribute,  often  spares  him  less  than  his  former  master 
did. 

His  spiritual  master,  the  Orthodox  Church,  instead 
of  sending  him  a  benevolent,  religious  gentleman  for  a 
pastor,  spiritual  teacher,  and  guide,  who  would  teach 
him  temperance  and  morality,  and  cheer  and  encourage 
him  in  the  hour  of  adversity,  saddles  him  with  a  knav- 
ish servile,  who  encourages  him  to  drink  vodka,  and 
bargains  like  a  horse-dealer  with  him  over  the  price  of 
baptizing  his  children. 


312 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Ten  chances  to  one,  if  he  ever  had  a  copy  of  the 
Scriptures  in  his  hand  in  his  life.  And  if  he  could  read, 
and  was  found  by  his  pastor  with  a  copy  in  his  posses- 
sion, that  precious  gentleman  would  very  likely  cause 
him  to  be  thrown  into  prison  as  a  heretic  and  a  dan- 
gerous person  ;  or,  still  more  probable,  would  demand 
a  bribe  for  omitting  to  do  so. 

If  by  some  extraordinary  freak  of  human  nature  the 
pastor  should  happen  to  take  interest  enough  in  his 
work  to  preach  an  occasional  sermon,  before  he  may 
deliver  himself  of  a  word  of  what  he  would  say  he  has 
got  to  write  out  his  sermon  and  submit  it  to  the  blagotch- 
inny,  a  sort  of  ecclesiastical  spy  and  censor.  It  is  un- 
necessary to  add  that  this  worthy  takes  very  good  care 
that  no  light  shall  penetrate  the  darkness  of  the  mou- 
jik's  understanding  by  the  channel  that  he  controls. 


CHAPTER  XX. 


RUSSIAN  WOMEN. 


HAT  do  you  think  of  the  Russian  ladies?''  was 


VV  a  question  often  asked  me  upon  my  return  to 
New  York.  Rather  a  delicate  question,  and  one  not 
to  be  answered  beyond  recording  a  few  observations 
picked  upon  the  journey  and  information  gleaned  from 
residents  of  the  country.  One  of  my  recollections  is, 
that  within  a  stone's  toss  of  the  balcony  of  my  room 
in  the  Hotel  Europe,  Sevastopol,  a  score  of  Crimean 
and  visiting  nymphs  were  paddling  and  splashing 
about  merrily  in  the  blue  waters  of  the  bay,  in  full 
view  of  half  the  city.  A  plank  fence,  jutting  fifty  feet 
out  into  the  water,  separated  them  from  three  times 
the  number  of  male  bathers.  Beyond  the  fence  Rus- 
sian propriety  was  observed,  if  the  sexes  mingled  not 
too  promiscuously  in  swimming  and  paddling  about. 
Some  wore  bathing-dresses  and  others  did  not,  accord- 
ing to  individual  preference.  A  boatload  of  soldiers 
passed  along  in  front  of  the  ladies'  bath-house  and 
every  head  in  the  boat  was  turned  inquisitively  in  that 
direction. 

One  of  the  peculiarities  of  Russian  women  is  that 
they  appear  to  have  no  objection  to  this  sort  of  scru- 
tiny. One  day  my  horse  refused  to  cross  a  stream  at 
a  certain  point.  A  little  farther  along  were  a  group  of 
women,  bathing.  Seeing  my  difficulty,  one  of  the 
women  stood  on  the  bank  and  motioned  to  me  that 


314 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


there  was  a  better  crossing  close  to  them.  The  water 
proved  to  be  shallow  enough,  in  all  conscience,  where 
they  were,  and  Texas  crossed  without  further  objec- 
tion. As  for  the  fair  bathers,  they  contented  them- 
selves with  dipping  down  in  the  water  until  I  had 
passed  through. 

This,  however,  is  only  preliminary.  It  is  as  a  study 
of  character  rather  than  form  that  I  would  endeavor 
to  present  to  my  readers  a  few  brief  impressions  of  the 
Russian  woman. 

An  English  governess  whom  I  met  in  Moscow,  who 
had  spent  twenty  years  in  Russia  as  tutor  in  the  fami- 
lies of  the  nobility,  told  me  that  Russian  ladies  of  rank 
and  wealth  are  nearly  all  "  spoiled  children."  Their 
virtues  are  warm-heartedness  and  financial  generosity, 
though  she  unwittingly  qualified  the  latter  by  adding 
that  they  knew  nothing  of  the  value  of  money. 

Russian  ladies  are  clever  and  talented,  but  are  afflicted 
with  both  mental  and  physical  laziness.  In  a  young 
ladies'  conservatory  there  will  be  a  very  large  percent- 
age of  promising  pupils,  but  very  rarely  indeed  does 
one  of  them  get  beyond  that  rather  vague  point.  One 
of  the  teachers  of  the  Moscow  Conservatory,  speaking 
to  my  informant  on  this  subject,  said  that  out  of  fifty 
bright,  promising  pupils  who  came  within  his  especial 
sphere  of  observation,  not  one  turned  out  a  success. 
The  trouble  is,  lack  of  will  power  to  persevere  to  the 
end — a  poverty  of  application.  They  learn  to  speak 
a  language  readily,  but  not  to  write  it,  the  reason  being 
that  the  former  requires  next  to  no  mental  effort  in  a 
person  of  ready  perception,  while  the  latter  demands 
close  application  and  attention  to  study. 


RUSSIAN  WOMEN.  3l5 

Music,  the  languages,  and  dancing  are  the  accom- 
plishments of  the  Russian  lady.  The  former  is  a  use- 
ful accomplishment  to  her ;  but  the  number  of  Russians, 
both  male  and  female,  who  have  learned  languages  and 
forgotten  them  is  surprising.  They  have  learned  super- 
ficially, and  in  a  year  or  two  forget,  for  the  lack  of 
some  one  to  talk  to.  One  meets  many  ladies,  however, 
to  whom  the  English  and  French  tongues  are  as  famil- 
iar as  the  Russian.  This  is  not,  as  is  generally  supposed 
in  America,  because  Russians  learn  languages  more 
easily  than  other  people,  but  simply  because  the  chil- 
dren of  every  well-to-do  Russian  family  of  any  preten- 
sion to  nobility  have  English  and  French  governesses. 

Their  vices  are  laziness,  untruthfulness,  extravagance, 
cigarette  smoking,  and  deceiving  their  husbands.  The 
Russian  lady  is  a  poor  housekeeper  and  she  rarely 
nurses  her  own  children.  A  hatred  of  mental  exertion 
in  the  matter  of  detail  and  carefulness  is  a  fundamen- 
tal trait  of  her  character,  and  the  keeping  of  accounts 
in  the  matter  of  household  expenses  is  a  species  of  in- 
tellectual slavery  with  which  Mine.  Ivanovka  will  have 
nothing  to  do  if  she  can  avoid  it.  If  household  eco- 
nomics thrust  themselves  upon  her  shoulders,  whether 
she  will  or  not,  she  gets  rid  of  them  in  a  slovenly,  shift- 
less manner,  and  consoles  herself  with  Zola  and 
cigarettes. 

I  was  assured,  however,  that  Russian  ladies  of  the 
upper  class  are  far  less  addicted  to  the  habit  of  smok- 
ing than  they  have  been  in  the  past.  Among  society 
dames  it  is  becoming  "  the  thing"  not  to  smoke  at  all, 
save  in  the  privacy  of  their  own  apartments.  The 
habit  is  largely  the  outcome  of  the  Oriental  ideas  that 


316  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


belong  to  old  Russia.  A  state  in  which  the  women  of 
the  household  are  excluded  from  the  society  of  the 
opposite  sex,  and  are  required  to  live  the  life  of  the 
harem,  is  favorable  to  the  development  of  such  habits 
as  cigarette  smoking  and  indulgence  in  opium,  as  in 
Turkey  and  Persia. 

Oriental  ideas  in  regard  to  the  fair  sex  still  prevail 
among  the  Russian  mercantile  class,  and  the  merchants' 
wives  and  daughters  are  the  most  inveterate  consumers 
of  cigarettes.  But  the  nobility  and  the  educated  sec- 
tion of  society  have  wholly  emerged  from  the  Eastern 
conception  of  female  seclusion,  and  many  women  of 
this  class  would  nowadays  be  ashamed  to  smoke  in  a 
railway  carriage  or  public  garden.  A  woman  who 
chooses  to  smoke  in  public,  however,  is  by  no  means 
regarded  as  unladylike.  Rather  is  she  in  danger  of 
being  looked  upon  by  her  more  "  advanced  "  country- 
woman as  behind  the  times — a  sort  of  country  cousin, 
who  is  regarded  with  much  the  same  scorn  as  if  she 
wore  unfashionable  clothes. 

The  foreigner  going  to  Russia  would,  moreover, 
never  suspect  that  cigarette  smoking  is  on  the  wane. 
Whether  on  train  or  on  steamboat  he  is  not  unlikely  to 
be  approached  by  more  than  one  woman,  cigarette  in 
hand,  begging  a  light.  And  when  he  returns  to  his 
own  country,  among  the  reminiscences  of  his  travels 
will  be  visions  of  both  old  women  and  young,  fair  and 
otherwise,  who  have  engraved  their  images  on  his 
memory  by  reason  of  the  great  number  of  cigarettes 
they  consumed  in  his  presence.  I  have  seen  women  on 
the  train  lay  a  box  of  ten  cigarettes  in  their  lap  and 
make  a  "  chain  smoke  "  of  the  lot.    Some  women  carry 


RUSSIAN  women: 


317 


tobacco  and  paper  and  roll  their  own  "  papyros,"  but 
mostly  they  buy  the  ready-made  Russian  cigarettes 
with  the  paper  mouthpieces. 

The  great  want  of  the  Russian  lady  seems  to  be 
something  congenial  to  occupy  her  time.  She  finds 
no  pleasure  in  needlework,  nor  in  walking  abroad,  lawn 
tennis,  or  any  active  pursuit  whatever.  She  is  not  per- 
mitted by  the  paternal  government  under  which  she 
happens  to  have  been  born  to  take  any  active  interest 
in  politics  or  to  promote  societies  for  the  advocacy  of 
women's  rights.  Clubs  and  societies  of  any  kind  are 
looked  upon  with  suspicion,  and  it  is  only  by  special 
permission  of  the  authorities  that  she  may  even  form 
a  society  in  her  native  town  for  the  distribution  of  rye 
bread  and  cabbage  soup  in  winter  to  the  poor,  or  a  S. 
P.  C.  A. 

Novels  and  cigarettes  and  sunflower  seeds  are  well- 
nigh  all  the  legitimate  occupations  that  come  within 
her  reach  ;  especially  at  her  country  residence,  away 
from  theaters  and  balls.  She  feels  within  her  an  in- 
spiration to  a  wider  sphere  of  usefulness  than  reading, 
smoking,  and  nibbling, — but  what  can  she  do?  She 
would  teach  the  poor  children  of  the  neighborhood, 
but  the  government  won't  allow  it.  She  has  an  idea 
that  the  ritual  and  ceremony  of  the  Orthodox  Church 
is  the  merest  mummery,"  and  would  seek  information 
in  other  directions  ;  but  the  government  won't  grant 
that  privilege  either. 

She  eventually  finds  diversion  in  the  attentions  of  a 
lover.  By  a  curious  coincidence,  my  information  on 
this  score  seemed  to  be  verified  by  an  incident  that 
came  under  my  notice  before  I  had  been  a  week  in 


318  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Russia.  About  three  o'clock  one  morning,  in  the 
hotel  where  I  was  staying  at  St.  Petersburg,  I  heard 
a  loud  report.  It  awakened  me,  but  thinking  it  was 
the  slamming  of  a  door  I  paid  no  further  heed.  In 
the  morning,  however,  it  turned  out  to  have  been  a 
revolver  shot,  fired  three  doors  from  me  by  a  Russian 
countess,  who  attempted  to  commit  suicide  during  a 
quarrel  with  a  young  officer. 

A  Swedish  teacher  of  languages,  whose  acquaintance 
I  made  in  St.  Petersburg,  confirmed  the  above  in- 
formation from  his  own  personal  knowledge.  This 
was  a  gentleman  on  whose  word  I  place  full  reliance. 
He  had  been  tutor  in  many  noble  families  in  and 
about  St.  Petersburg,  Moscow,  and  Kharkoff  in  Little 
Russia.  His  experience  and  observation  were  that, 
for  the  want  of  something  better  to  occupy  their 
minds,  Russian  ladies,  with  very  few  exceptions, 
amused  themselves  with  intrigue. 

With  all  this,  I  was  asked  not  to  judge  the  Russian 
ladies  too  harshly,  or  by  the  same  standard  that  one 
would  apply  to  the  women  of  other  countries.  Their 
conduct  is  not  immoral.  This  would  be  too  harsh  a 
term  altogether.  The  Russian  ladies  simply  have  such 
large  hearts  that  it  takes  more  than  one  man  to  fill  one 
of  them. 

The  maternal  instinct  is  a  conspicuous  trait  of  the 
Russian  female  character.  Women  of  all  classes  like 
large  families  ;  the  larger  the  better.  In  the  villages 
nearly  every  woman  has  a  baby  in  arms.  I  came 
upon  a  fine  example  of  maternal  instinct  in  the  person 
of  Sascha's  prospective  mother-in-law,  with  whom  we 
took  dinner  at  her  country  house  near  Tula.  This 


RUSSIAN  WOMEN. 


319 


good  lady  had  fifteen  children  of  her  own.  Yet  she 
had  adopted  two  orphans  ;  and,  at  the  time  I  made 
her  acquaintance,  was  watching  over,  with  motherly 
solicitude,  a  parrot  that  had  had  one  eye  knocked  out, 
and  a  daw  with  a  broken  wing ! 

Ladies  of  quality  rarely  nurse  their  own  children. 
The  nurse,  with  her  charge,  is  always  a  conspicuous 
figure  on  the  streets  of  a  Russian  city.  The  fantastic 
garb  and  coronet  of  beads  constitute  one  of  the  most 
picturesque  costumes  in  Russia;  and  you  can  tell  by 
its  color  whether  her  charge  is  a  boy  or  a  girl.  If  a 
boy,  the  prevailing  color  will  be  blue  ;  if  a  girl,  pink. 

Vanity  is  not  one  of  the  Russian  lady's  cardinal  sins. 
Though  bad  complexions  arc  the  rule,  as  a  result  of 
the  climate,  bad  ventilation,  irregular  living,  and  want 
of  exercise,  no  well-bred  lady  paints.  Small  feet  and 
hands  are  common,  and  if  the  Russian  lady  takes  pride 
in  any  particular  part  of  her  person  it  would  be  the 
smallness  and  shapeliness  of  these  extremities. 

Though  the  Russian  does  not,  like  the  Sultan  of 
Morocco,  fatten  his  wife  by  forced  feeding,  as  poul- 
terers gorge  turkeys  for  Christmas,  his  idea  of 
womanly  beauty  is  still  somewhat  Oriental.  He  pre- 
fers a  fat  wife,  with  a  pink  and  white  skin,  and  is  very 
apt  to  break  the  second  clause  of  the  Tenth  Command- 
ments if  his  neighbor's  wife  comes  nearer  this  ideal 
than  his  own. 

Among  the  merchants  and  peasant  class  many  old- 
fashioned,  conservative  Muscovite  notions  in  regard  to 
women  still  prevail.  The  Russian  merchant  thinks  it 
no  disgrace  to  knock  his  wife  down  with  a  blow  of  his 
huge  fist,  and  the  moujik  beats  his  better  half  with  a 


320 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


stick  whenever  he  thinks  she  needs  correction.  The 
wife  has  no  remedy  in  law  against  physical  chastise- 
ment at  the  hands  of  her  husband,  nor  thinks  of 
resorting  to  the  protection  of  the  authorities.  Her 
opportunity  occurs  whenever  her  lord  and  master 
comes  home  helplessly  intoxicated.  While  he  is  thus 
powerless  to  defend  himself,  she  seizes  a  stick  and 
repays  with  interest  every  blow  she  has  received  from 
him  since  his  last  drinking  bout. 

One  day  Sascha,  who  belonged  to  the  merchant  class, 
and  expected  after  a  term  of  soldiering  to  follow  the 
life  and  traditions  of  that  caste,  surprised  me  by  a  re- 
mark in  respect  to  women.  He  was  a  young  man 
who  knew  absolutely  nothing  about  horses,  and  con- 
sequently was  always  giving  me,  who  did  know  some- 
thing about  them,  advice  as  to  the  management  and 
care  of  Texas.  On  the  occasion  referred  to  my  horse 
was  a  trifle  fractious. 

"You  must  beat  him,"  said  Sascha.  "  A  horse  is 
like  a  woman  ;  if  you  don't  give  him  a  good  beating 
now  and  then  he  will  be  capricious  and  want  to  do  as 
he  pleases,  and  not  as  you  wish.  With  women  it  is 
the  same." 

"  Do  you  intend  to  beat  your  wife  when  you  get 
one,  if  she  is  willful  in  her  behavior?  "  I  asked. 

"  Beat  her  ?  Of  course,"  he  returned.  "  I  should  be 
thought  a  fool  if  my  wife  acted  counter  to  my  wishes 
and  didn't  get  a  beating  for  it." 

Among  the  middle  and  lower  orders  of  Russian 
society  the  model  wife  is  she  whose  good  conduct  and 
slavish  obedience  to  the  will  or  whims  of  her  husband 
give  him  no  excuse  to  lift  hand  or  rod  against  her,  and 


RUSSIAN  WOMEN. 


321 


who  never  beats  her  husband  when  he  is  drunk.  Wives 
beating  their  husbands  is,  however,  a  recognized  phase 
of  Russian  social  life.  Among  the  cheap  chromos  that 
adorn  the  walls  of  village  tea-houses  and  traktirs  one 
of  the  most  familiar  scenes  is  a  drunken  moujik  on  the 
ground  and  his  wife  beating  him  in  no  gingerly  manner. 

The  merchant's  wife  and  daughters  still  keep  out  of 
sight,  in  accordance  with  Oriental  custom,  when  male 
friends  call  on  the  husband;  and  when  they  go  shop- 
ping the  husband  and  father  goes  with  them,  assists 
them  with  their  bargains,  and  pays  the  bills.  The 
merchant's  wife  paints  her  cheeks  and  is  fond  of 
bright-colored  clothes.  You  often  see  them  arrayed 
from  head  to  foot  in  garish  red.  She  spends  the 
greater  part  of  her  time  in  drinking  tea,  smoking  ciga- 
rettes, and  gossiping  with  visiting  friends.  There  is  a 
saying  that  "  a  merchant's  wife  can  drink  a  whole 
samovar  of  tea." 

Her  mental  abilities  arc  held  in  light  esteem  by  her 
spouse  and  his  friends,  who,  though  keen  merchants, 
are,  for  the  most  part,  men  of  scant  education.  Their 
ideas  of  women  find  expression  in  many  contemptuous 
axioms  and  sayings  that  have  come  down  from  father 
to  son.  The  Russian  merchant  or  peasant  will  tell  you 
that  "  a  woman  has  long  hair,  but  a  short  mind  ;"  that 
she  is  a  child  of  the  devil;  and  that  when  you  fall  in 
love  with  her,  you  fall  in  love  with  the  Evil  One.  It 
is  considered  bad  luck  to  meet  a  woman  when  you  are 
going  fishing  or  shooting  ;  and  plenty  of  Russians  will 
turn  back  and  start  afresh,  confident  that  ill  luck  will 
wait  upon  their  rod  or  gun  if  they  happen  to  meet  a 
woman  upon  the  road.    In  the  churches  "  neither 


322 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  GN  A  MUSTANG. 


women  nor  dogs  "  are  permitted  to  penetrate  into  the 
inner  sanctuary,  though  men  and  boys  are  freely  ad 
mitted. 

Marriages  among  this  class  are  always  marriages  of 
convenience.  They  are  usually  arranged  by  the  parents 
or  an  old  woman  go-between,  known  as  the  svaha,  the 
contracting  parties  having  little  or  nothing  to  say  in 
the  choice  of  their  partners.  The  business  of  the  svaha 
is  to  keep  herself  informed  regarding  the  rising  genera- 
tion about  her,  and  bring  about  marriages  between 
suitable  persons.  Her  reward  is  a  commission  on 
dowries,  or  liberal  presents.  She  knows  the  worldly 
prospects  and  the  personal  worth  of  every  youth  in 
the  town,  and  the  amount  of  dowry  that  each  young 
lady  of  her  acquaintance  is  likely  to  receive. 

Having  ascertained,  by  frequent  business-like  talks 
with  the  parents,  that  the  prospects  and  personal 
recommendations  of  two  young  people  are  mutually 
satisfactory,  she  arranges  a  simultaneous  attendance  at 
church  or  theater,  where  the  proposed  bride  and  bride- 
groom may  get  a  sly  peep  at  each  other.  If  they  are 
satisfied  with  their  choice,  preliminaries  are  at  once 
entered  upon,  a  formal  betrothal  takes  place,  and,  soon 
after,  the  wedding. 

Gypsy  fortune-tellers  are  often  resorted  to  for  the 
purpose  of  finding  out  what  sort  of  a  husband  the 
daughter  will  obtain.  Russian  gypsies  like  Russian 
horse  dealers,  Russian  merchants  and  Russian  officials, 
are  a  good  deal  more  tricky  than  the  same  classes  ^ 
in  most  other  countries.  Well  aware  of  the  credulity 
of  the  merchants'  wives  and  daughters,  they  some- 
times enter  into  partnership  with  a  scheming  svaha 


it  US  SI  AN  WOMEN. 


and  a  penniless  young  man  to  obtain  possession  of  the 
hand  and  dowry  of  a  wealthy  young  woman.  The 
scheme  is  an  ingenious  one  and,  leaving  out  the  ques- 
tion of  dishonesty,  ought  to  succeed  and  does. 

It  would  be  an  inexcusable  act  of  injustice  to  the 
Russian  woman  to  dismiss  her  without  pointing  out 
that  whenever  the  true  test  of  womanhood  is  imposed 
upon  her,  she  proves  herself  as  great  a  heroine  as  any 
in  the  world. 

In  her  hours  of  ease  she  may  be  "  uncertain,"  even 
"  coy  and  hard  to  please,"  but  when  her  husband  is 
overtaken  by  the  exile's  garb  and  starts  on  the  dreary 
road  to  Siberia,  perchance  to  a  living  death,  lovers 
and  all  else  are  forsaken,  and  she  is  herself  again — a 
woman. 


CHAPTER  XXT. 


A  NATIONAL  CHARACTERISTIC. 

INALLY,  if  any  one  were  to  ask  me  what  trait  of 


1  character  is  most  conspicuously  developed  in  the 
Russians,  based  on  observations  during  my  ride 
through  the  country,  I  would  answer — suspicion.  On 
reflection  I  might  perhaps  hesitate  a  moment  between 
suspicion  and  superstition,  and  bestow  a  passing 
thought  on  servility;  but  whichever  of  these  three 
graces  prevails,  the  Russians  are,  to  my  mind,  the  most 
suspicious  people  under  the  sun. 

From  this  sweeping  assertion  I  don't  except  even 
the  Chinese.  My  acquaintance  with  John  Chinaman, 
though  not  of  long  duration,  was  nevertheless  exceed- 
ingly close  while  it  lasted.  I  need  only  refer  to  my 
"  Around  the  World  on  a  Bicycle."  One  who  has  rid- 
den a  bicycle,  alone,  seven  hundred  miles  through  the 
highways  and  byways  of  a  dimly  known  section  of 
China,  where  a  large  part  of  a  dense  population  had 
never  set  eyes  on  a  "  foreign  devil,"  let  alone  a  bicycle, 
before,  is  entitled  to  a  hearing  on  the  question  of  sus- 
picion, if  on  no  other  subject. 

The  ride  through  Russia,  though  on  a  flesh  and 
blood  horse,  instead  of  a  steel  one,  was,  so  far  as  op- 
portunities for  observation  among  the  people  are  con- 
cerned, substantially  a  similar  performance.  Coupling 
these  equal  chances  of  seeing  to  advantage,  with  an 


A  NATIONAL  CHARACTERISTIC.  325 


unprejudiced  judgment  between  them,  I  have  no  hesi- 
tation in  yielding  the  palm,  with  a  considerable  margin 
in  their  favor,  to  the  subjects  of  His  Imperial  Majesty, 
the  Czar. 

Patriotic  Russians  will  tell  you  that  in  the  person 
of  the  Czar  are  embodied  all  the  virtues  of  all  the 
Russias.  Alexander  III  undoubtedly  possesses  most 
of  the  negative  virtues  and  some  of  the  positive  ones, 
and  in  his  benevolent  countenance  you  look  in  vain 
for  the  cynical  suspicion  supposed  by  many  to  be  the 
inherent  expression  of  autocratic  sovereigns.  The 
Czar  possesses  his  full  share  of  the  passivity  of  the 
Muscovite  character,  which  leads  men  to  shift  their 
burdens  and  responsibilities  to  others  ;  and  so,  per- 
haps, he  has  honored  his  faithful  Chief  of  Police,  by 
handing  over  to  him  his  own  lawful  share  of  the 
national  trait  in  question. 

In  the  natural  order  of  things,  from  an  American 
point  of  view,  the  Czar  should  be  the  most  suspicious 
person  in  Russia.  That  honor,  however,  undoubtedly 
belongs  to  His  Imperial  Majesty's  deputy  just  men- 
tioned. He  is  the  Czar's  watchdog.  And  just  as  a 
householder  may  dismiss  all  worry  from  his  mind  after 
giving  his  watchful  bull-dog  the  run  of  his  premises, 
so,  within  the  measure  of  human  fallibility,  does  the 
Czar  resign  his  care. 

Suspicion  is,  so  to  speak,  the  stock  in  trade  of  a 
police  officer  in  any  country,  and  when  he  figures  as  a 
cog  in  the  wheels  of  a  thorough-going  autocracy  his 
business  is  fairly  to  bristle  with  it.  The  usefulness  of 
the  Czar's  Chief  of  Police  depends  on  the  amount  of 
suspicion  that  is  concentrated  in  his  person  and  his 


326  THR  O  UGH  R  US  SI  A  ON  A  MUS  TA  NO. 


alertness  in  putting  it  to  active  use.  So  efficient  is 
Gen.  Gresser  in  this  particular  that  about  15,000  per- 
sons are  sent  away  from  St.  Petersburg  every  year; 
and  under  his  drastic  administration  the  tourist  who 
goes  and  peeps  at  Russia  through  Peter's  window  sees 
a  city  that  creates  a  pleasant  and  favorable  impression 
on  his  mind,  and  streets  through  which  the  Czar  may 
drive  without  a  guard. 

From  the  chief  of  the  Russian  police  to  the  humble 
moujik  of  a  squalid  hamlet  on  the  steppes  is  a  long 
jump,  but  suspicion  seems  as  inherent  in  one  as  it  is 
the  necessary  qualification  of  the  other.  And  through 
every  gradation  of  Russian  society,  official  and  unoffi- 
cial, this  baneful  quality  of  the  mind,  thrusting 
itself  on  the  writer's  notice,  weigh  heavily  in  the 
balance  against  the  better  side  of  the  national  char- 
acter. 

Russia  is  a  land  of  surprising  contradiction,  in.  char- 
acter as  in  institutions.  The  autocrat  is  obeyed  by  a 
multitude  of  tiny  republics  (mirs),  and  in  the  average 
Russian  you  find  a  truly  paradoxical  character  in  which 
a  warm,  impulsive  frankness  links  arms  with  an  ever- 
present  suspicion. 

The  figure  that  looms  most  prominently  in  my  mind, 
apart  from  the  fountain-head  of  the  whole  fabric  at  St. 
Petersburg,  is,  strange  to  say,  perhaps,  my  equestrian 
companion,  Sascha.  He,  in  fact,  carries  off  the  honors 
and  distinction  of  first  attracting  my  attention  to  this 
very  pronounced  element  in  the  character  of  his  coun- 
trymen. Thrown  in  daily  contact  with  him  for  several 
weeks,  I  came  to  understand  him  thoroughly,  and 
through  him  got  an  "  inside  glimpse"  of  many  things 


A  NATIONAL  CHARACTERISTIC. 


327 


that  would  have  escaped  the  observation  of  a  foreigner 
traveling  alone  through  the  country. 

Sascha  was  warm-hearted  and  impulsive  as  a  child. 
Full  of  faults  and  contradictions,  it  was  yet  quite  im- 
possible to  entertain  harsh  feelings  toward  him.  From 
first  to  last  he  never  ceased  to  regard  me  with  suspi- 
cion whenever  anything  happened  contrary  to  his  pre- 
conceived ideas.  In  one  of  the  villages  between  Count 
Tolstoi's  estate  and  Orel  he  lost  his  passport.  Ten 
hours  later,  after  I  had  bribed  a  troublesome  uriadnik 
to  let  him  proceed  without  it  to  the  next  provincial 
government,  he  confessed  in  a  burst  of  confidence  that 
he  had  believed  I  destroyed  his  passport  in  order  to  get 
rid  of  him.  All  day  he  had  nursed  this  suspicion, 
quite  unsuspected  by  the  victim  of  it  at  his  side,  who, 
at  the  end  of  that  time,  unwittingly  cleared  himself 
through  bribing  a  policeman. 

In  this  odd  manner  was  discovered  the  traces  of 
"  color "  that  led  up"  to  the  discovery  of  a  veritable 
mine  of  the  precious  commodity  that  forms  the  subject 
of  this  chapter. 

Like  my  horse,  Texas,  who  had  such  a  deep-rooted 
repugnance  to  wetting  his  feet  that  it  required  as  much 
persuasion  to  get  him  into  the  last  stream  of  the  Crimea 
as  the  first  one  from  Moscow,  so  Sascha  persisted  in 
the  display  of  this  Russian  peculiarity  to  the  end  of  our 
comradeship.  Between  the  affair  of  the  passport  and  my 
parting  company  with  him  at  Kanseropol, there  were  per- 
haps a  dozen  trifling  instances  of  ordinary  and  extraordi- 
nary affairs  on  the  road, where  I  came  under  his  suspicion. 
On  no  single  occasion  was  there  the  faintest  shadow 
of  reason  in  it.    This  he  was  always  quick  to  see  and 


328 


THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


ready  to  admit  in  tones  of  self-reproach  after  the  cloud 
had  rolled  by;  yet  when,  at  parting,  I  wished  him  to 
sign  a  receipt  for  money  that  I  gave  him  to  pay  his  way 
back  home,  his  ridiculous  suspicions  immediately  came 
again  to  the  surface. 

Though  he  understood  that  I  only  wanted  some- 
thing to  prove  to  his  people  in  Moscow  that  I  had 
treated  him  fairly  and  liberally,  in  case  anything  should 
befall  him,  Sascha  objected.  And  the  reason  he  gave 
was  singularly  Russian. 

"  It  is  quite  right,"  he  said,  "  that  you  should  have 
such  a  receipt." 

"  Then  why  do  you  hesitate  about  giving  it  ?" 

"  You  will  promise  not  to  be  offended  if  I  tell  you  ?" 

u  Certainly." 

"  Well,  then,  with  such  a  paper  you  could  make  me 
pay  the  money  back  again  in  Moscow  !  " 

When  arranging  for  the  trip  in  Moscow,  Sascha's 
elder  brother,  a  city  merchant,  had  asked  me  to  give  him 
fifteen  rubles  a  month  spending  money  beyond  ex- 
penses. I  had  been  so  well  pleased  with  his  intelligence 
and  readiness  to  talk  about  Russian  affairs  as  we  rode 
along  that  I  had  given  him  fully  three  times  the  amount, 
besides  which  I  had  gained  from  him  both  admiration 
and  respect.  Yet  the  strange  mistrust  of  his  fellow- 
men,  that  seems  to  be  latent  in  the  heart  of  every 
Russian,  obscured  in  a  moment  all  our  pleasant  relation- 
ship and  transformed  me  into  a  most  uncomplimentary 
character. 

This  I  pointed  out,  and  Sascha,  blushing  with  honest 
contrition,  gave  me  the  receipt  without  a  moment's 
further  hesitation.    I  was  always  rallying  him  about 


A  NATIONAL  CHARACTERISTIC. 


329 


this  side  of  his  nature,  but  it  was  not  to  be  dislodged 
either  by  ridicule  or  discomfiture.  In  an  American, 
an  Englishman,  a  German,  this  pertinacious  suspicion 
would  have  called  for  resentment,  but  with  the  Russian 
it  is  plain  as  daylight  that  he  is  no  more  responsible 
for  his  suspicions  than  a  crow  is  for  being  black. 

And  speaking  of  crows,  since  there  are  supposed  to 
be  white  crows,  it  is  fair  to  presume  that  there  may  also 
be  such  phenomena  as  unsuspicious  Russians,  though 
I  should  say  one  would  be  as  rare  a  bird  as  the  other. 

Though  I  never  lost  patience  with  my  companion  on 
account  of  his  absurd  suspicions,  there  was  a  certain 
malicious  delight  in  seeing  him  come  daily  under  the 
suspicion  of  others.  He  never  grew  weary  of  relating 
to  his  countrymen  that  his  companion  had  ridden 
around  the  world  on  a  bicycle,  and,  though  he  never 
succeeded  in  getting  one  of  them  to  believe  it,  he  re- 
turned to  the  unequal  combat  on  an  average  of  three 
times  a  day.  "  Eato  na  mozJict  buct  "  (Such  a  thing 
cannot  be)  was  the  answer  he  nearly  always  got,  and 
any  further  attempt  to  explain  away  his  auditor's  sus- 
picions only  tended  to  increase  them.  His  sole  reward 
would  be  their  admiration  of  what  they  considered  his 
extraordinary  abilities  as  a  disciple  of  Munchausen, 
artistic  lying  being  regarded  in  Russia  as  a  valuable 
accomplishment. 

Among  the  peasants,  the  suspicions  of  the  people 
with  whom  we  had  dealings  assumed  many  curious 
forms.  In  a  general  way  we  were  always  under  the 
ban  of  suspicion  ;  primarily  because  we  w  ere  strangers, 
and  secondly,  because  we  were  strangers  of  an  uncom- 
mon sort. 


33o 


THROUGH  RUSSIA   ON  A  MUSTANG. 


The  recognized  tendency  of  the  densely  ignorant  to 
regard  with  suspicion  anything  they  cannot  understand, 
operated  against  us  in  every  village  we  entered.  Curi- 
osity might  greet  us  with  a  fair  measure  of  hospitality 
to  begin  with,  but  suspicion  was  very  sure  to  be  close 
in  its  wake  and  would  eventually  come  to  the  fore. 

By  the  men  we  were  suspected  of  being  secret  agents 
of  the  government,  visiting  them  in  the  artful  guise  of 
passing  travelers.  By  the  women,  whose  dread  of  the 
Evil  One  was  more  palpable  than  their  dread  of  govern- 
ment spies,  we  were  suspected  of  being  Antichrists, 
wizards,  or  "  Cow  Deaths." 

One  poor  old  soul  is  distinctly  remembered  among 
many  others  because  of  her  innocent  confidences. 
She  didn't  know  what  we  might  be,  she  confessed  ;  as 
for  her,  she  was  very  old  and  had  nothing  more  to  live 
for,  so  could  very  well  be  indifferent  as  to  what  might 
happen  as  a  result  of  our  visit. 

She  remembered,  however,  that  two  strangers,  "very 
much  like  us,"  had  ridden  through  the  village  during 
the  war  with  the  Turks  ;  that  three  boys  who  had  fol- 
lowed them  down  the  road  to  call  them  names  were 
never  seen  again.  We  took  this  as  a  powerful  hint  to 
deal  gently  with  her  grandchildren  who  were  playing 
about  near  by,  should  we  be  meditating  a  supernatural 
visitation  of  any  kind  on  the  inhabitants  of  the  place. 

Another  form  of  suspicion  was  equally  amusing, 
though  very  annoying. 

Whether  we  obtained  accommodation  over  night 
with  a  rustic  inn-keeper  or  a  moujik,  it  seemed  to  be  a 
most  natural  suspicion  in  the  mind  of  our  host  that  if 
not  watched  very  closely  we  might  clear  out  and  leave 


A  NATIONAL  CHARACTERISTIC. 


331 


him  to  whistle  for  his  money.  As  a  general  thing,  our 
entertainer  would  content  himself  with  keeping  a  sharp 
eye  on  our  movements  from  the  earliest  streak  of 
dawn,  and  with  presenting  himself  before  us  at  the 
slightest  movement  toward  saddling  our  horses.  But 
others  would  reassure  themselves  with  a  sly  peep  at  us 
once  or  twice  during  the  night.  So  universal  was  this 
form  of  suspicion  that  the  few  rare  exceptions  shine 
out  very  prominently  in  my  recollections  of  the  journey. 

The  same  trait  is  to  be  observed  to  advantage  in 
Russian  hotels.  The  waiters  and  chambermaids,  in- 
stead of  acting  after  the  manner  of  the  same  class  in 
England,  who  manage  with  considerable  tact  to  "  hap- 
pen along  "  at  your  departure,  in  Russia  commence 
hanging  about  for  tips,  like  a  pack  of  hungry  dogs  at 
feeding  time,  an  hour  before  the  traveler  thinks  of 
leaving.  The  explanation  of  the  difference  is  that  the 
lower  orders  of  society  in  England  have  confidence  in 
human  nature,  whereas  the  Russians  are  as  distrustful 
as  monkeys. 

In  addition  to  the  suspicion  of  being  "  beats,"  we 
were  frequently  suspected  of  attempting  to  pass  coun- 
terfeit money.  Whether  such  paper  is  common  in 
Russia  the  writer  had  no  means  of  learning,  but  we 
were,  all  along,  in  the  villages,  suspected  of  having  it 
in  our  possession  and  of  attempting  to  pay  our  bills 
with  it. 

"What  makes  these  people  so  long  in  bringing  the 
change?  "  was  a  query  I  put  to  Sascha,  after  the  first 
few  experiences  in  patient  waiting. 

"  They  are  afraid  the  note  is  a  counterfeit,"  he  re- 
plied, "  and  are  taking  it  to  various  people  in  the 


332  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


village  for  their  opinion  before  bringing  us  the 
change." 

"Well,  the  change  is  only  thirty  kopecks,"  we  will 
not  wait  any  longer;  the  cool  of  the  morning  will  be 
frittered  away." 

"  That  must  not  be  either,"  returned  my  companion, 
"  or  they  will  conclude  at  once  that  the  bill  is  a  bad 
one." 

A  curious  phase  of  this  particular  suspicion  was  that 
the  length  of  time  we  were  kept  waiting  was  in  pro- 
portion to  the  denomination  of  the  suspected  bill.  If 
it  were  only  a  two-ruble  note,  our  suspicious  host 
evidently  would  content  himself  with  submitting  it  to 
the  verdict  of  two  or  three  other  capable  financiers, 
and  would  keep  us  waiting  only  ten  or  fifteen  minutes. 
If  a  five-ruble  note,  however,  he  would  take  extraordi- 
nary precautions,  probably  getting  the  opinion  of  half 
the  experts  in  the  village,  resulting  in  most  exasperating 
delay  for  his  guests. 

Of  the  suspicions  of  the  provincial  police  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  say  here  that  they  assumed  every  conceivable 
form  that  the  Russian  mind  could  invent  in  connection 
with  the  appearance  of  a  couple  of  strangers  traveling 
in  an  extrordinary  manner. 

In  Malo  Russia  the  suspicions  of  the  people  multi- 
plied, owing  to  a  more  polyglot  population.  In  the 
North  the  villagers  were  all  Orthodox  Russians  ;  in 
the  South  there  is  a  mixed  population  of  Russians, 
German  colonists,  Jews,  Malo  Russians,  Cossacks, 
etc.  There  the  Orthodox  would  suspect  me  of 
being  a  Molokani,  or  Stundist  propagandist,  with 
whom  it  would  be  dangerous  to  associate,  and  the 


A  NA  770NAL  CHARACTERISTIC. 


333 


sectarians  suspected  me  of  being  an  ecclesiastical 
spy. 

The  Jews  were  more  suspicious  than  any  of  the 
others,  particularly  as  the  government  was  then  vent- 
ing on  them  one  of  its  periodical  fits  of  persecution. 

The  women  of  the  better  orders  of  society  are  by  no 
means  free  from  this  unlovely  trait.  One  morning, 
after  an  all-night  ride  in  a  train,  I  roused  up  from  fitful 
snatches  of  sleep,  indulged  in  sitting  up,  and  bade  a 
nice  old  lady  on  the  other  side  of  the  car,  whom  I  had 
conversed  with  the  evening  before,  good-morning. 

"  Some  one  has  stolen  my  watch  in  the  night,"  she 
replied,  holding  up  ruefully  the  chain  that  dangled  from 
her  bosom.  Seeing  that  the  snap  was  broken,  I  sug- 
gested that  it  was  only  lost  under  the  seats.  She 
shook  her  head,  but  acted  on  my  suggestion,  and  im- 
mediately found  the  watch. 

She  and  a  young  woman  had  slept  on  the  same  seats, 
which  can  be  pulled  out  and  used  as  a  mattress,  and 
missing  her  watch  in  the  morning,  she  had,  without  a 
moment's  reflection,  suspected  the  young  woman  of 
robbing  her.  The  idea  that  it  might  only  be  lost 
seemed  not  to  have  entered  her  head. 

One  cannot  help  laying  the  blame  for  this  abnormal 
development  of  one  of  the  most  unlovely  traits  of 
human  character  to  the  pernicious  influence  of  the  sys- 
tem of  government  under  which  they  live. 

Suspicion  and  mutual  distrust  are  the  legitimate  leg- 
acy that  an  autocratic  government,  which  has  to  be  sus- 
picious in  order  to  exist,  transmits  to  the  people.  In 
short,  it  seemed  to  me  simply  a  case  of  "  like  govern- 
ment, like  people," 


334  THROUGH  RUSSIA  ON  A  MUSTANG. 


Indeed,  it  occurs  to  me,  as  I  reach  the  end  of  this 
record  of  a  journey  of  investigation,  that  most  of  the 
blemishes  that  deform  the  Russian  character, — the  sus- 
picion of  which  the  last  few  pages  treat  ;  the  corruption 
of  the  clergy  ;  the  intellectual  degradation  of  the  peas- 
ants; the  dishonesty  of  the  mercantile  element ;  the 
poverty  of  the  masses;  the  drunkenness  and  improvi- 
dence, are  mainly  chargeable  to  the  monstrous  thing 
we  call  the  Russian  government.  The  people  have 
naturally  many  admirable  traits,  which,  if  they  were 
allowed  to  develop  and  expand,  would  enable  them  to 
put  to  shame  many  of  their  lofty  and  self-sufficient 
critics.  They  are  charmingly  simple,  and  free  from  the 
caddish  affectation  of  superiority  that  disfigures  the 
society  of  Western  Europe,  and  in  which  America  is 
not  the  least  of  the  offenders.  The  Russian  is  by 
nature  a  "  good  fellow  ";  and  it  is  agreeable  to  believe 
that  by  and  by,  when  he  is  allowed  to  read  newspapers, 
educate  himself  properly,  and  develop  politically  and 
religiously — in  short,  to  be  a  man,  and  take  charge  of 
himself,  instead  of  a  child  in  the  crib  of  a  paternal  gov- 
ernment,— he  will  in  time  develop  the  sturdy  virtues  of 
manhood's  estate,  and  take  the  place  he  ought  to 
occupy  in  the  brotherhood  of  civilized  men. 


THE  END. 


GETTY  RESEARCH  INSTITUTE 


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